


All I Want

by rikyl



Category: The Hating Game - Sally Thorne
Genre: Christmas AU, F/M, Josh POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:00:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24373930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rikyl/pseuds/rikyl
Summary: It's Christmas Eve, and the building is practically empty. Helene is in France, Richard has taken the opportunity to be even more absent than usual, and most of the rest of the staff, including, notably, the entire HR department, have already taken off for their various holiday plans. Up here on the executive floor, it's just Josh, Lucy, and an all-day game of All I Want.(A Christmas AU set during the holiday season prior to the start of the book)
Relationships: Lucy Hutton/Joshua Templeman
Comments: 55
Kudos: 106





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I realize it's May. I meant to finish this by Christmas, but what is time anyway?
> 
> Thank you to Blithers for the beta read and enthusiasm.

Waiting for the elevator doors to slide open on the top floor of Bexley & Gamin, Josh's heart beats a little faster, like it always does when he's about to see her. He shifts his gym bag higher on his shoulder and takes a deep breath, schooling his face.

He's had six months of practice at this—no, make that twenty-plus years of practice. He's been putting on this mask since he was in grade school. He is impervious.

Stepping out of the elevator, his eyes zero in on her immediately, and he watches her as he makes his way through several layers of glass. So much glass. Sometimes he feels like they are animals in a lab, two different species thrown together, to be poked, prodded, and studied. But there are no mad scientists running this experiment—only the two of them, confined in such close quarters for such long periods of time that they can't help but poke and prod each other. Hoping for what result, he can't say, but the results sure as hell won't be published in any reputable journal.

Her glossy mass of dark hair had been down this morning, but it's pulled back loosely now, some stray curls falling toward her face. She's wearing a blue dress printed with little green birds that buttons up the front. In the summer, she had worn that dress with strappy sandals. Today, a cream cardigan, leggings that look like they're made out of some kind of thick sweater material, and heeled boots.

A large unopened package sits in her lap, and she leans over it, staring so intently, it's as if she expects it to do something. She's so deeply engrossed that she doesn't notice his arrival in the doorway, and he takes advantage of the moment to just look at her.

Lips so red, eyes so blue, hair so dark. Lucy so … something.

“How's that X-ray vision working out for you, Lucinda?”

Her face jerks upward, and her eyes widen like she's been caught. She shoves the box under her desk and swings back to her keyboard, as if she had been working this whole time. His interest level sharpens considerably.

“Really well, Joshua,” she snaps, red lips pursing. “I'll be able to read the secret diary locked in your desk in no time.”

“Oh, no,” he drawls in mock horror. “Then you'll find out all my secret thoughts about you.”

He looks away self-consciously, as if she might actually be able to read his secret thoughts ( _pathetic_ ), hangs up his coat, puts his gym bag down, and sits at his desk, trying to look at the box without obviously looking at the box as he situates his inconveniently long limbs. Since their desks are also glass, the box is sitting in plain view. There's no place to hide anything in this office, a fact he's been acutely aware of himself at times, and he feels a touch of sympathy for her even as he attempts to snoop. But she would do the same to him.

In addition to being much larger than the mysterious tiny packages she receives periodically, it lacks the retail look of an internet shopping binge. It appears to have been carefully hand-wrapped in brown paper, the rows of stamps are holiday themed, and the address is handwritten—a woman's handwriting. He can't make out the return address from this distance, but he'd bet money it came from the land of strawberries.

“So, what's going on at the strawberry farm these days? Getting ready for Christmas?”

Lucy's typing furiously now and doesn't even pause when she shoots a lightning quick warning glare at him.

“Humor me. I'm a simple city boy trying to relate to the common folk.”

“My family is not _common_.”

“You're right, I apologize. I've seen the website. They look quite _un_ common.”

She huffs dismissively at him, and he presses his lips together, suppressing something. (Always suppressing something.)

He's been picturing Lucy at the farm at Christmastime since the first snowflakes fell in November. Christmas Day is a Friday, and she's not taking any time off, so she's probably leaving right after work on Christmas Eve. There's a 6:45 flight, nonstop, three hours and twenty-one minutes long. Both parents will show up to pick her up at the airport, bursting with genetically matched enthusiasm. They'll be driving a pickup, one they probably also use for farm work.

“I'm picturing it,” he says to her now, leaning back in his chair, his hands folded on his chest, gazing toward the ceiling. “Snow-covered fields. Burl Ives on the record player. A pile of presents under the tree. A roaring fire … little Lucy curled up with a book. A big family dinner, way too much food for three people. Strawberry pie for dessert. Am I close?”

It's an embarrassingly vivid picture, but the thing about their dynamic is that it gives him cover to say or ask just about anything he wants. She never thinks he's sincere. It's plausible deniability.

“Shortcake?”

Lucy's gone unusually quiet, and when he looks more directly at her, he sees that her eyes have gone shiny, her jaw is clenched, and her chin is quivering just slightly. Josh flinches, dropping his mock-thoughtful pose to sit up. He straightens in his chair and considers her. “Are you okay?”

“Don't call me that. And I'm fine.”

She's clearly not.

This is the downside of the games they play. She never thinks he is sincere.

Lucy turns away from him to pull herself together with a quick makeup fix in the reflective surface of a filing cabinet.

Slowly, Josh opens his planner and puts a tiny “x” next to December 21, even though it doesn't quite encompass the way he wants to reach out to her, and pushes down the uncomfortable feeling in his chest. He stares at the date and wonders why her parents would be sending her a care package a few days before Christmas if they're going to see her imminently.

And then it hits him. The timeline, the barely checked emotions, the box.

They're not going to see her. Lucy isn't going to the strawberry farm for Christmas.

 _Huh_.

*****

Josh's head hurts from the chipper strains of “Run, Run Rudolph.” He's holding a plastic cup of fizzy, fruity, nonalcoholic punch that he's not drinking, just to have something to do with his hands. He's mentally calculating the cost of lost productivity as his colleagues make inane chitchat about their holiday plans.

He's watching her from underneath a cloak of annoyed boredom.

Lucy's wearing a gray sweater with colorful felt Christmas stockings sewn onto the front, and he idly wonders if it would qualify as an “ugly Christmas sweater” in the trendy way. It looks soft.

Her skirt is red, a bit shorter than knee-length, and has enough material that it flares out from her body as she moves, turning to greet this person, then that person, a friendly smile, as trademark as her red lipstick, for everyone but him. She is effervescent, and he mentally catalogs the marks he will make in his planner when they return to their office upstairs.

All her conversations are enthusiastic but brief. She's popular enough, but she doesn't seem to have any particular friends on staff, which puzzles him, considering how she is. Are they all blind, or stupid? He looks around, and yes, probably, both.

He wonders if she had been close to anyone who hadn't survived the merger. It would make a grim kind of sense.

Josh forces himself to look away and wanders over to the food table, where an assortment of homemade cookies is laid out. Lucy made at least half of them—he had seen her with an overflowing box of Pyrex this morning—and had organized the sign-up sheet for the rest. He bypasses the cookies for the crudités, reaching for a carrot just to have something to do.

Paul McCartney starts in with the most irritating earworm of the season, and he wonders if Lucy is behind the music too.

“I guess it wouldn't be Christmas without the Grinch.”

Speaking of hell’s littlest devil, she is suddenly next to him, a small flurry of activity as she sets out more cookies, filling in gaps he hadn't noticed.

“I took one carrot, Lucinda. Hardly qualifies as stealing a holiday.”

“Your heart's an empty hole. Your brain is full of spiders. Garlic in your soul. Something something about seasick crocodiles. If the unwashed socks fit … ”

He clasps his hand to his chest in mock distress. “Way harsh, Lucinda.”

She considers him, tilting her head to the side, her sky blue eyes focusing on him in a way that makes his breath catch. “You're right. That was unfair of me, when you are clearly more analogous to Ebenezer Scrooge.”

He breaks the eye contact, thinking of the productivity calculation he had made just minutes ago, the laid-off friends he had imagined for her, and bites back a grimace.

“If I remember correctly, Scrooge got out of these sorts of invitations.”

“So, what are you doing here?”

 _You're here_.

“Oh, you know. Simply having a wonderful Christmastime.” He flicks his eyes toward the impromptu speaker arrangement. “Is this your doing?”

Her eyes flare in satisfaction—the bright look she gets when she thinks she has succeeded at goading him in some way, and he feels himself brighten at having caught her at it. “Of course.”

“You weaponized a playlist against me,” he accuses, narrowing his eyes at her. It's such an absurdly adorable way to wage battle.

“You overestimate your own importance.”

“Do I?”

She rolls her eyes theatrically, like a petulant teenager.

“Tsk, tsk, Lucinda,” he murmurs. “The elves are watching.”

“The elves know I've been good this year. Unlike some people.”

“Of course, you wouldn't have to worry, with your connections. You're probably related to someone in wrapping.”

She puts a hand on her hip and pulls herself up straighter, as if that will make her taller. It kills him. “Jokes about my height. That's low-hanging fruit, don't you think?”

“I have trouble reaching the low-hanging fruit, personally. Speaking of your relatives, how are the Huttons these days? Looking forward to seeing their progeny?”

He probably shouldn't provoke her on the subject, but it's been two days since he found out she isn't going to her parents' farm, and he can't help himself. The cozy fantasy he had pictured for her has fallen apart, and he's been trying to reimagine—Lucy in the city. Who would she spend Christmas with here? Friends? A boyfriend? He’s always pictured her as single, but he doesn't know that for sure, and the thought is more than a little unsettling.

The way she'd reacted on Monday, she hadn't looked like she was anticipating a holiday with a special someone.

But when he pictures her alone, he doesn't like that idea much either.

“They're fine, and no,” she admits, her voice clipped and businesslike. “I have a lot of work to do, covering for Helene while she's in France, so I decided not to go this year.”

“Working over a holiday,” he says. “Now who's the Scrooge?”

“Not _just_ working.”

“Oh, you have other plans?”

“Of course I have plans. Plans that don't concern you.”

“Oh, I'm very concerned.”

“Well, _that_ doesn't concern _me_.”

She looks away in annoyance but doesn't stalk off like he expects her to, and they watch the party in silence as the song switches over to “Last Christmas.” Lucy has picked up a sugar cookie and is nibbling around the edges, eating it slowly as if she is using it to pass the time—a prop like his untouched cup of punch.

“Are you taking off next week?” she asks finally.

“No, I'll be here.”

“Wonderful. I'll have company.” She doesn't sound at all happy about it, and he guesses that she had been hoping for a respite from their constant animosity.

“Hey, all I want for Christmas is for you not to be here either,” he quips. 

“Finally, we agree on something,” she says, but a catch in her voice betrays that this isn’t really about her proximity to him at all. Of course she’d rather be with her family. And as much as he would dread the colorless monotony of a week spent sitting across from her empty desk, he finds himself wanting that for her too. 

He’s still frowning down at her when she looks away uncomfortably. “Speaking of work ...”

Josh looks around, and she's right, the party is winding down, and they can finally get back to it. Only he's not as impatient as he had been a few minutes before.

As they take the elevator back upstairs in silence, locked in a halfhearted staring game, something occurs to him, and he glances at his watch, giving Lucy the win. He had been almost clocking her conversations all through the party, and he's pretty sure their own had been the longest.

*****

It's Christmas Eve, and the building is practically empty. Helene is in France, Richard has taken the opportunity to be even more absent than usual, and most of the rest of the staff, including, notably, the entire HR department, have already taken off for their various holiday plans. Up here on the executive floor, it's just him, Lucy, and an all-day game of _All I Want_.

Their newest game starts first thing in the morning, almost as soon as she gets off the elevator, after he watches her take off her coat to reveal a yellow sweater over a black dress with white polka dots.

“Merry Christmas, Joshua,” she says stiffly, apparently giving in to the pressure of the season to be marginally festive, even among mortal enemies.

“Ho … ho … ho,” he responds in kind, and then spontaneously throws himself into the role. “I've heard you've been a very good girl this year, Lucinda. And what do you want for Christmas?”

“All I want for Christmas is for your two front teeth to fall out of your head,” she responds after a moment's considered thought.

And it is on.

Like almost all of their games, its main goal is interrogation, as he attempts to goad her into revealing details about herself. Predictably, it devolves into just another way to needle each other, and they volley back and forth intermittently for the rest of the day:

“For you to stop calling me Shortcake.” ( _Yeah right. She loves it_.)

“For you, just once, to wear pants.” ( _Is she deliberately torturing him with those dresses? Some days he can hardly concentrate._ )

“For you to go to hell.” ( _Not her most original work, but fair_.)

“For you to take that pencil out of your hair. It's a writing utensil, used for writing.”

When he mentions the pencil, she reaches up and touches it, inadvertently knocking it loose, freeing all those wild curls to fall around her shoulders, and her eyes widen in annoyance. Quickly, she spins toward one of the many shiny surfaces she uses as a mirror and winds it all back up on top of her head, petulantly shoving the pencil back in at an angle. A few stray curls fall toward her face.

It's one of the most alluring scenes he has ever seen, and he struggles for the next half an hour to focus on the year-end expense review in front of him, all the while itching to pull that pencil out again.

*****

Midafternoon, Lucy sighs almost imperceptibly, rubs the corners of her eyes, and stretches her arms up toward the ceiling, which pushes her breasts out. Josh averts his eyes. “All I want for Christmas is a couple of extra days off,” she announces.

Josh sits back, adjusting to the change in tone from their earlier game, and considers this, how she should be spending Christmas at home with her parents, where she obviously wants to be. How she probably would need to take enough time off to justify the expense of the flight. And how she should be doing that—she could be.

“According to the employee handbook ...”

“Stop. I know how many days I'm entitled to.”

“So why not take them?”

She gestures vaguely at her desk as if it's self-explanatory. “Helene needs me here to cover for her.”

He knows how much work Helene offloads onto Lucy and the fact that she's suffering for it infuriates him.

“So, if you took the time off, Queen Helene might have to take fewer spa days. Her manicure might be less perfect. The French would have to endure without her presence.”

For a moment, Lucy looks desperately unhappy, and he kicks himself, realizing that he's still stating the obvious. She's smart, and she has certainly had all these same arguments with herself already, and instead of being helpful, he's just making her feel bad.

“Anyway,” he says. “Who am I to talk, I guess.”

She snorts, sounding more like herself. “Seriously.”

“Hey, now. Remember, the elves are watching.”

“I already know what's going to be under my tree, because it arrived on Monday.”

“Really. My care package arrived on Tuesday.” It was filled with his mother's good intentions and soap, per usual.

“Someone sent you a package?” He might find the disbelief in her voice insulting, if he allowed himself to care at all what she thought.

“I have a mother.”

“Really.” She tilts her head, the space between her brow puckering as she seems to think on this, and he takes a sip from his coffee mug. “Was it a Rosemary's Baby-type situation?” 

And almost spits it out. She is so funny sometimes that he has trouble remembering why he can't let himself laugh.

“You know what,” Lucy says ominously, with the timbre and inflection of an elderly neighbor, “tell your mother I'd like a word with her sometime. Yes, I'd like to have a word about her son's manners.”

“I'll be sure to mention it next time we talk,” he agrees, without an ounce of sincerity.

It will almost certainly be tomorrow. His mother’s not exactly happy that he's skipping Christmas again this year, and he doesn't want to think about that. Maybe he should actually have her call Lucy—it would be the perfect diversion tactic, and would serve Lucy right for suggesting it. 

“If you have the kind of mother who sends care packages, why aren't you picking it up in person?”

“There's just no place I'd rather be than here.” This deflection is delivered with a calculated dose of sarcasm, but it's a little too close to the truth, sitting across from Lucy and her unruly hair half-tamed by a pencil that matches the shade of her sweater, as she accuses him of being the literal spawn of the devil.

“Yeah, right,” she mutters as she returns her attention to her screen.

Josh studies her for a moment, and then makes another notation next to the date in his planner. He looks lingeringly at the next square, the Friday when he would normally be back here, sitting across from her. The space looms large and empty.

 _Fucking Christmas_.

*****

“A truce,” Lucy says. “It's Christmas Eve, and I want a truce.”

Josh glances at the clock and realizes how late it is. The world outside the window is dark, and the building has gone as quiet as a tomb. The three-day weekend stretches out in front of him, impossibly long, but it would be absurd to linger any later.

“A Christmas Eve truce. Like the Germans and the British in World War I.”

“I was thinking of Snoopy and the Red Baron.”

He covers his face with his hands so she doesn't see him smile, then wipes if off, physically pulling his facial muscles downward. “Okay. Deal.”

“What? You're agreeing?”

“For the rest of the workday. Or rather, for the next three minutes in the elevator, until we reach the parking garage.”

“Ugh, you're right, it's late.” She looks around, not making any move to go yet, and he wonders about the empty apartment she's avoiding, if it's anything like the empty apartment he'll be avoiding by hitting the gym.

He's been obsessing about that apartment, trying to picture her in it. It's probably tiny and cute and colorful, filled with dollhouse-sized furniture and smelling of strawberries and baked goods.

Will she be alone there tomorrow? He can't stop thinking of the possibility, of her being some odd number of blocks away from him, across the city, or around the corner, on a weekday when she would normally be here, sitting across from him.

After a moment she snaps out of it, shuts down her computer, gathers up her belongings, and slides out of her heels and into her snow boots. They both put on their coats and make their way to the elevator.

“You know what I noticed today,” he says mildly, as they wait for it to arrive.

“Do I want to know?”

“Of course you do.” He looks sideways at her so he can watch her face. “Almost every single thing you say you want for Christmas has to do with me.”

Her mouth falls open, and the elevator arrives.

“You're already violating the truce,” she accuses him. 

He presses the button for basement parking and registers with some annoyance that she hits the one for ground level, cutting his limited time left with her even shorter.

“Not a violation. Just an observation.”

“Here's another observation for you. Everything you want has to do with me.”

 _If only she knew_.

“That's interesting. Because all I really want for Christmas, Lucinda, is … you.” _Under my tree, in my bed, snuggled against my side in front of a warm fire on the strawberry farm._ God, he's pathetic, and he's going to regret this. After a beat, he continues smoothly, as if that hadn't been the end of a sentence, as if his heart hadn't started beating overtime, “—to believe one thing I ever say to you. Just one thing.”

She lets out her breath in a whoosh like she's been holding it for the past ten seconds. “Ha. And what _one thing_ should I believe?”

“That's the question, I suppose.” Josh shrugs, and the elevator door opens on the ground floor, ending the shortest elevator ride ever, and dammit, he's not ready to say goodbye to her.

“I'll keep that in mind.” She moves to exit, and on impulse he throws a hand up to keep the door from closing, and reaches out with the other to catch her by her upper arm.

Lucy pulls up short, turning back toward him with giant question marks and exclamation points beaming out of her eyes, and he swallows.

“I have a bus to catch,” she says, pulling away.

“It's Christmas Eve. The buses stopped running an hour ago.” It could be true.

Her mouth falls open, and she looks toward the dark, snowy scene beyond the glass doors, dismayed.

“I'll take a cab,” she says, with less conviction, as they both notice the lack of traffic. Everyone in the world, quite possibly including cab drivers, appears to be already home with their families.

“Don't. I'll drive you.” Staring down her hesitation, he quickly adds, “Come on, the Christmas Eve truce is still in effect.”

She frowns, her body rigid with reluctance, but finally she nods once, and he remembers to let go of her as she steps back into the elevator. His fingers involuntarily flex as they drop to his side, and she reaches a hand up to touch the place on her arm where his hand had been. He realizes that for all the months he has been sharing space with her, it's the first real physical contact they've ever had, and he's going to relive it, the shape of her slender arm, the imagined feel of her skin through several layers of fabric, all night long … possibly forever.

On the way to his car, he practices projecting outward calm, while adrenaline surges inside him. It's not like he's been visited by three wise-ass ghosts who have inspired him to reach out and change his weekend or his life—it's just a short car ride. 

He settles himself down by thinking about the specific chemical reactions that are causing this feeling, breaking them down to their most clinical terms. His adrenal glands spit out epinephrine, triggering the sympathetic nervous system: heightened senses, alert reflexes, dilated pupils. Enlarged air passages and increased heart rate facilitate the flow of oxygen. His blood vessels are redirecting resources from his stomach and intestines to his large muscle groups.

One point of contact set off a fight-or-flight response. Sounds about right.

She starts giving him directions, and he diverts his attention to that, and to watching the road. The snow is falling thickly now, and he's glad she hadn't insisted on going out into this alone.

“Car in the shop again?” he asks.

“No. It's just slow to start in the cold, and I was in too much of a hurry to sweet talk it. I'll figure it out in the morning.”

“On Christmas morning?”

“You have something better planned?”

“For you?”

“For _you_. Not you, a general you.” He squints at this nonsense, wondering if she's flustered. “It was rhetorical.”

“Right.”

After a few minutes, she turns on the radio and flips around until she finds a Christmas song. It sounds like it's sung by those cartoon chipmunks he always hated as a kid.

“Relatives of yours?” he asks.

“Truce!”

He waves at the car stereo, still emitting some high-pitched squeaks that are definitely not music.

“This is your idea of peacetime behavior?”

Before she can respond, they drive past a city bus, and she sees it.

 _Shit_.

“So the city buses aren't running tonight?” Her voice drips with sarcasm, sweet and sour, just like her.

“Oh, like you'd rather be on a bus tonight, sandwiched between drunken mall Santas.”

“You kidnapped me!” she sputters.

“If I kidnapped you, I'd be taking you to _my_ apartment,” he points out reasonably.

“At least I'd get something out of this, then.”

 _She wants to see his apartment?_ Josh mentally bookmarks that question to return to later.

“I didn’t kidnap you. I offered you a ride home.”

She literally harrumphs at that. “Harrumph,” she says, and it's accompanied by an epic eye roll. Even watching the road, he can tell it's an eye roll for the ages. Bravo.

“Under false pretense. This is impossible. I don’t know why I ever thought … you are impossible,” she grumbles. “Here, this is my building. Let me out here.”

He pulls forward until he finds an actual parking spot and carefully parallel parks into it, ignoring the conniption fit she is having in the passenger seat as she tries to figure out how to release his power locks.

So this is where she lives. He mentally maps the route he'll take home and estimates that she is fourteen city blocks away. They're not neighbors, but it's an easy run, a long walk, a short drive from his place. So close, and still so frustratingly far. _Impossible_ , just as she said.

_I don’t know why I ever thought …_

What? What did she think?

Lucy figures out the lock as the car lines up with the curb and jumps out. She's out so fast, he spontaneously flips the ignition off and jumps out after her.

“Lucinda!” he calls out, with no idea what he’s going to say beyond that.

She spins around and flings her hands out in an exaggerated gesture of exasperation, and her key ring flies out of her hand into a pile of snow someone has shoveled to the side.

Relieved to have something to do, a reason for being on the sidewalk in front of her building at this particular moment in time, Josh reaches down and fishes around in the wet slush until his fingers close on cold metal.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Retrieving your keys. You might say thank you.”

“I wouldn't have dropped them if you hadn't been stalking me.”

“I gave you a ride home.”

“An unnecessary ride. And I'm home now, so you can leave. Now give me my keys.”

“No.”

“NO?”

His ungloved hand is icy cold now, and she won't even say thank you, so he doesn't feel too concerned with taking orders from her at the moment, even though she has a point. There's no reason for him to be here, and definitely not to still be here.

Lucy makes a dive toward his hand, and he shoves the keys high in the air. The keys are now more than seven feet off the ground, and she's hopping underneath like a very irate bunny. His wall of mounting frustration cracks, and he comes closer to laughing out loud than he has ever done in her presence.

She pauses, assessing the situation, and for a moment, he thinks she's about to try climbing him, and he momentarily wishes she would. Wouldn't that be a Christmas wish come true.

“Joshua!” She stamps her feet in the snow, her fists at her sides.

“Lucinda.” He’s gotten himself under control, so her name comes out calmly, like they’re sitting across from each other in the office rather than engaging in some sort of weird power struggle on the sidewalk.

“Come _on_ , Joshua. It’s friggin’ cold out here.”

“So let’s go upstairs.” It’s a perfectly logical suggestion, isn’t it? She’s cold, and he’s … dammit, he doesn’t know what he is.

Lucy sputters dismissively. “Yeah, right.”

“Let me see your apartment, and you can have your keys back.” His voice is calm, rational. His overwhelming need to see the space she spends their time apart in is definitely not.

“I'm not going to invite you in! Are you insane?”

“You don't have to invite me. I saved you the trouble and invited myself. An uninvited guest.”

“You don't play fair.”

He shrugs. “Pot. Kettle.”

 _Kettle_ would actually be a pretty good descriptor for her right now. There's practically steam coming out of her ears. He could tip her over and make tea.

He half smiles at the thought, the bubbling over of an expression he's been holding in for too long. She sees it, her face lighting up in recognition of it, and he kicks himself. But then—

“Fine!” she says. “Have it your way. I can't believe you.”

Josh sympathizes, because he can't believe himself right now. Or that this insane behavior is working.

Lucy reaches for the keys again, but with a stern shake of his head, he gestures for her to lead the way. Shoulders hunched forward, she grumbles and sputters as she walks ahead of him into the building.

“You're going to pay for this.”

“Probably,” he agrees.

After a brief, tense elevator ride, they're at her door. She reaches for her key ring again, but he pushes forward and slides it into the lock. With a click, it pushes open, and before she can scramble ahead of him, he steps inside, fumbling for a light switch.

He can't believe he's here. He can't believe he tricked her into accepting a ride home, held her keys hostage, and forced her to let him inside. Who is he?

But he's here.

A pair of table lamps spring to life, illuminating white walls, a saggy brown couch, and a whole lot of clutter. He can see clothes on the floor near what's probably her bedroom door and a bin of unfolded laundry near his feet. Piles of paper are strewn on every surface. An abandoned teacup sits next to the couch, red lipstick on the rim. There's a cabinet on the far wall that he'd like to inspect further if he didn't already feel like such an intruder. And books. So many books.

Aside from a dress on the floor he remembers her wearing earlier in the week, and the books, which seem in character, it's hardly the colorful, retro abode he had pictured for her.

After scanning the room, his eyes are quickly drawn back to Lucy, who is by far the most lively part of this frankly depressing tableau. Her blue eyes are ablaze, her red lips an angry slit, her curls fallen loose and seeming to stand out even more than usual, and she is clutching her phone like a weapon.

“Expecting a call?” His voice comes out thin, like his wavering bravado.

“An enormous man followed me home and forced his way into my apartment. But he should know, I have the police on speed dial, and the precinct is a block away.”

Josh swallows and takes a step backward. She is vibrating, practically shaking, and he is suddenly very self-conscious of their size differential, and _shit_.

He shouldn't be here. It hits him all at once, in the gut, and he feels queasy. They always push each other, beyond the boundaries of comfort, until one or the other invokes HR, but he's taken it several steps too far tonight—into downright creepiness.

The realization forces him to drop his guard for a moment. He lets all the insincerity, irony, and sarcasm fall away, all his protective layers of pretense, and does something they never do.

He apologizes. “I'm sorry. I pushed it too far. I shouldn't have taken your keys.”

“Or?”

“Invited myself up.”

“Or?”

“Given you a ride?” he offers, annoyance starting to creep back in before he catches himself. “Fine. Look, I didn't know about the buses. It was a guess.”

She relaxes slightly, loosens her grip on the phone and folds her arms across her chest, a gesture that makes her look even smaller and more vulnerable, and Josh has the powerful urge to step toward her. Instead, he creeps back further into the doorway and hovers there, feeling more and more like a storybook villain—a large awkward creature, ungainly and inhuman, unable to move forward except by permission.

“But why? Why would you do all that? Why are you here?”

 _I'm lonely. I'm dead inside and you make me feel alive. I don't want to be apart from you_. All these thoughts, the ones he doesn't usually let through, slide into his head simultaneously, crowding everything else out, so he shrugs irritably. They stare at each other, at an impasse.

“Well?” she says impatiently, gesturing around her apartment. “What's the damage? Tell me. I want to know what I'm in for now that you've seen it.”

He takes another look, taking it all in, a distraction from himself. “It’s … I don’t know, it’s not what I expected.”

“What does that mean?”

“It looks like a depressed person lives here.” He doesn't mean it the way it sounds. It's the truth, and he's confused by it.

When she flinches, he feels like he should have said something else. “I've been busy.”

“I know.”

And he does know. He's seen the cookies and the decorations for the office party, the spreadsheets and reports she prepares for Helene, and the way she smiles while she gives up her evening to martyr herself for various deadbeats downstairs. Of course she doesn't have anything left over once all the parasites have drained her.

“You think I'm pathetic.”

“I don't.”

She makes a harrumphing sound, and he turns away from the cluttered room to look at her fully.

“Shortcake,” he says quietly, his heart in his throat, tasting a hint of a regret he might feel about this whole scene on Monday. “Believe _one thing_ I say. I don't think you’re pathetic.”

She bites her bottom lip and furrows her brow, looking toward his feet, before popping back up, defiant.

“Well, don't be surprised if I someday barge my way into your place to gawk at all your piles.” She spits the words out like a threat that should make him shake in his boots.

But the image of her showing up at his apartment, of her looking around to try to understand something about him, is a fantasy he hasn't even allowed himself to have, and he makes a choked sound that is almost a laugh ( _he's slipping_ ) and swallows. “That seems only fair.”

On impulse, he finds a piece of junk mail within arm's reach and pulls a pen out of his jacket, as she tilts her head at him curiously. He raises his eyebrows at her, then turns to use the doorjamb as a writing surface. He scrawls something on it, his heart thumping in his chest.

There. A good faith gesture to make up for this ridiculous invasion.

She takes the slip of paper he hands her and studies it in confusion. “An address?”

He nods.

“Your address? This is where you live?”

He repeats the gesture, one slow but certain bob of his head.

Lucy stares at the paper, mulling it over, clearly skeptical, but her features start to brighten. He watches her mouth twist to the side, mentally filling in the smile he thinks she's hiding. When she meets his eyes again, she's practically glowing with the power he has offered her—his address, a way to find him, as if she'd want that—and he turns toward the door again because he can't hold back his own smile.

“You can't be serious,” she scoffs. “You'd lure me there and not let me in.”

He swings his eyes back to hers, a challenge. “You don't know unless you try.”

If he were to straight up invite her over for a holiday meal, he's pretty sure she'd choose stewing in her own filthy apartment. But he can only guess at her own reasons for playing their games, and hope that she just might be as desperately curious about him as he is about her. If only for the ammunition.

 _At least I’d get something out of this, then_ , she had said.

She squints at him, and for some reason, the way her eyelids are covering all but a sliver of her eyes makes them even more alluring. Like a woman's robe when you know she's hiding something interesting underneath. (Although maybe he really shouldn't be having such stray thoughts _while standing in her living room_.)

“When?”

“When?” he echoes dumbly, before bringing himself back to the matter of hand. “Oh. Any time.”

She's still squinting at him disbelievingly.

“Any time? You don't mean that.”

Does he mean that? He's lost track, and he isn't sure exactly what game they're playing at now. The open-endedness of _any time_ is troubling, but trying to nail down something more specific—like a date—is downright dangerous. Is he inviting her to his apartment? Is that what they're doing?

He feels a little nauseous. Let her come to him if she's going to. “Try me.”

“Okay,” she says smugly, like she's got him. “Tomorrow then.”

Tomorrow is literally December 25, and for a moment he's dumbfounded. Is she inviting herself over for Christmas? Or is she calling his bluff, trying to get him to back down? Well, two can play at that.

Josh spreads his hands in front of him, projecting all the innocence of a choir boy in a nativity pageant. “I have no plans. I can't go to work. My gym is closed. Some might say it’s a perfect day to accept some friendly revenge.”

Lucy folds her arms across her chest and studies him through those alluringly narrowed eyes. He stares back. A classic Lucy-and-Josh staredown. And then something else passes over her face, something knowing and self-satisfied, and his stomach drops.

“You want me to come over.”

“I … what?”

“That's why you're here, in my apartment. You're alone for Christmas. You're the one who's lonely and pathetic, so desperate for company that you're reduced to this … this, whatever this is you're doing tonight.”

It's an extremely well-aimed sucker punch, and Josh punches back unthinkingly. “Maybe I was taking pity on you after seeing your sad hellhole of an apartment.”

He regrets it as soon as he says it, but his shot was pure bluster, and Lucy only raises her eyebrows and shakes her head, casually dismissing the idea.

Embarrassed, he reaches forward to take the scrap of paper back but she snatches her hand away and clutches it against her chest.

“It would serve you right if I took you up on it,” she says petulantly. “Maybe I will.”

“Maybe you will … what, show up for Christmas dinner?”

“Maybe. You invited me. Didn't you?”

Somewhere in the back of his head, in a walled-off corner of his mind, it occurs to him that this is the moment. He could call her bluff, just not in the way she's expecting. He could come clean—tell her he does want her there, he wants _her_. A less rational corner suggests that he could step forward, sweep her into his arms, and show her how much that's true.

But he's barely admitted as much to himself, and, ridiculous raging desires aside, his self-preserving reflexes are deeply ingrained, and so he hedges.

“If you have nothing better to do,” he says noncommittally, subtly insinuating that showing up would be an admission of that.

“I'm not saying I will,” she says hotly.

“Fine. I'm not saying I want you to.”

“But it would only be fair.”

 _Fair_. That's their thing. The word annoys him, and he's not sure why. But as absurd as it is, if he has any reason to think he might actually see her tomorrow, it's that.

“You showed me yours, now I show you mine?” he says.

Her eyes drop down, gratifyingly, and her cheeks pop with color.

“HR,” she breathes.

“At least you're not threatening to call the police anymore,” he murmurs.

Lucy lifts her eyes to his, and they stare at each other for a long beat. Her eyes are the most remarkable color, he registers for the millionth time, and it's so hard to look away from them. He wants to stay in this space and banter and squabble with her forever, pushing each other's buttons until he has her pressed against the wall, at his mercy—or even better, vice versa. 

His insides feel warm, liquid, and the tension seems palpable. He can't be the only one who feels it.

“It's late,” she says, throwing a bucket of cold water on the moment.

“Yeah. Well, this has been fun, but I better go. I wouldn't want to overstay my welcome.”

“Very funny, you giant psycho,” she says, with less heat and conviction than the words might merit.

Maybe he has been enmeshed in this dynamic for too long, because it sounds almost like an endearment.

“Good night, Shortcake.” An unauthorized bit of warmth steals into his voice, and she blinks at him before sticking her tongue out.

He takes that as his cue to go, and she closes the door quickly behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

Josh wakes up way too early, buzzing with the anxious hopefulness of an overgrown kid on Christmas morning, one who has spent the whole year pulling pigtails and putting frogs in lunchboxes but still had the nerve to ask Santa for something enormous and specific.

There's no way she will actually show up. But he will spend the whole day waiting and hoping, like the giant psycho she called him.

He makes himself a protein shake and then dresses in layers. The gym is closed, so he laces up his shoes for a run. Outside, the sidewalks are still slippery with the snow that fell yesterday evening, so this probably isn't a great idea, but he has to do something to burn off this nervous energy and put a dent in the long and uncertain day ahead of him. He runs and he runs, thankful every time his feet land surely on the pavement instead of sliding out from under him, and it's not until he's a block away from her apartment that he realizes where he is.

He stops at the corner instead of letting himself go closer and bends over, resting his hands on his knees while the self-loathing washes over him. _Pathetic_ is the word his mind spits out at him whenever he reaches a little too far toward something, and he is so far beyond that right now that he wants to recoil away from himself.

He is the black sheep, a disappointment, exiled from his own family on Christmas. (By choice, technically, but it's hardly a choice considering what he'd be subjecting himself to.)

He's been alone for months, having been rejected in the most humiliating way possible by someone he didn't even truly want. And if he really does want someone else… why wouldn't she reject him on the same grounds?

And yet, he stays in a job that he's overqualified for, that was supposed to be a placeholder, just to be near her, to watch her smile at anyone else but him.

 _Pathetic_ , he allows himself once more, before picking himself back up, like he always does.

He breathes in and out, in and out, letting the cold air fill his lungs, and turns back in the other direction. On the way back, he walks, feeling his skin cooling down, his heart slowing, his muscles stretching after the exertion. His body is a machine, a miracle, a carefully crafted disguise. The city is quiet and pretty, and with the discipline of someone who once contemplated medical school, he focuses on that, and on all the ways in which he is objectively okay. He almost feels it by the time he approaches his building.

Before he reaches it, he pauses, something catching his eye. The grocery store nearby that had been selling live Christmas trees out front all month has piled the last few mangy remnants near the sidewalk, with a handwritten sign: “Free to take. Happy holidays!”

Josh bends down to rifle through them and holds up a particularly runty one that's about Shortcake size—little more than a branch. Compared to the fresh-cut ten-foot specimens his mom puts up every year, it’s pretty pitiful, but he feels an odd sort of camaraderie toward this discarded, barely living thing. It should have a Christmas.

 _He_ should.

Setting the tree down on the curb, he jogs over to the convenience store across the way. It's open and he goes in, wandering the aisles until he finds a small selection of mostly picked-over cheap holiday paraphernalia. Just about anything in the traditional red and green is gone, but he picks up several strings of blue and silver beads and four strands of white lights and thinks he has done all right.

With his purchases tucked under his arm, he picks the sad homeless tree back up off the curb and heads home. If nothing else, putting it up will give him something to do.

He doesn't have a tree stand, but he remembers the abandoned container garden that Mindy had kept at his place, back when she was trying to feign some sort of comfortable domesticity, and he retrieves a pot from the tiny balcony off the living room. After scooping out the snow and pulling up the remnants of what might have been a tomato plant at some point, he shoves the dirt around to make room and pushes the narrow trunk down into it, then presses the soil firmly against its base. Luckily, the tree is small enough to hold. He sets the pot on a plate in his living room and adds some water, then gathers a navy throw blanket around it like a tree skirt.

He puts all the lights on, winding them around thickly until the whole thing looks like it's lit from within, then drapes the beads more judiciously. When he's done, the effect is not only passable—it's pretty, and it makes him feel less lonely to have it here, even if Lucy doesn’t show up.

Of course she’s not going to show up. On Christmas Day! The idea is laughable.

He showers and decides to go about his day operating on that assumption.

*****

Josh's phone buzzes in the middle of the afternoon, while he's half-watching a basketball game and half-reading last month's _New Yorker_ , and he jumps out of his skin, almost knocking over a table lamp in his hurry to reach for it.

“ _Are you going to murder me today?_ "

He almost laughs out loud. He’s not even sure how Lucy would have his cell phone number—but Richard has it, for work emergencies, so she might have come by it through illicit means. Little snoop.

After thinking a moment, he responds: “ _In the spirit of the season … only if I have to, out of self-defense._ ”

A few dots appear on the screen, and then disappear. He waits, and when she doesn't say anything, he says “fuck it” to the empty room and types again.

“ _I'll be cooking. So if you work up an appetite from all the snooping, you could stay for dinner._ ”

He holds his breath and waits for her reply, which seems to take forever.

“ _Reconnaissance and a home-cooked meal. You sure know how to tempt a girl._ ”

Josh grins, his cheeks splitting with the unusual feel of it.

“ _Is that what it takes? I wondered_.”

The pause is shorter this time, but long enough for him to wonder if they're flirting. If they've always been flirting. If it's all been in his head.

“ _Okay. I'll be there in about an hour_.”

She'll be here in an hour. Just like that. All he had to do was to give her his address.

“ _Drive safe_ ,” he types, like a protective boyfriend, and his finger hovers between the delete and send buttons. _Text for the life you_ _want_ , he thinks recklessly, almost sarcastically, and taps send.

He stands up, sits down, stands back up. He goes to his room and takes off his sweatshirt, replacing it with a black sweater. Then he takes that off and replaces it with a blue one, because his mother once told him it looked nice with his eyes.

Ridiculous. He's being ridiculous. Enough.

In the kitchen, he opens the refrigerator. He had been planning to cook a big meal and eat leftovers later in the week, so there's plenty of food. On impulse, he pulls a wine bottle out of a cupboard and puts it in to chill.

Then he wanders, shifting throw pillows, restacking a pile of magazines. He looks around at the carefully chosen furniture and details, trying to see his place through her eyes. By all appearances (and not by accident), he looks to be a reasonably successful person living a decent life.

He wonders if she'll see through it. If he wants her to see through it.

Finally, Josh stops to look at the tree. He’s glad that he has it, he thinks she’ll be impressed he has one (not that she’d admit it), but it's missing something.

After an indecisive moment, Josh returns to the bedroom and roots around in the back of a top drawer until he finds what he's looking for. Holding the tiny box in his hand, he wonders if he's crazy enough to do it, and then decides that today, he just might be, and at any rate, he can always change his mind about it later.

He pulls some blue tissue paper out of the box his mom had sent and wraps it in a double layer, then puts it under the tree.

Before he can overthink it anymore, the buzzer sounds.

*****

Glancing at the clock, Josh sees that it's been fifty-two minutes. She's early.

After taking two slow breaths, he strides toward the door. “Come on up,” he says into the intercom and buzzes her in, then bounces restlessly on his toes facing the closed door.

After an interminable wait, he hears her footsteps in the hallway and opens it just as she's raising her fist to knock. They stare at each other for a moment, and then she takes a step back, looking like she's ready to bolt. Quickly, he steps forward to put a hand on her back and guide her firmly inside, then slides her coat off her shoulders before she can object.

“Lucinda. What a delightful surprise. Merry Christmas.” His voice sounds rustier than usual, and he clears his throat.

“Merry Christmas, Joshua,” she says, stiffly.

Before she can entertain second—or third, or eleventh—thoughts about this, he opens the closet and hangs up her coat, marveling at how tiny and cute it looks next to his bulky overcoat. He could carry her coat in his coat's pocket. It's adorable.

When he turns back, her snow boots are sitting in the tray by the door, next to his, a bag she'd been carrying dropped next to it, their owner apparently having given into the temptation to wander further into his apartment. He follows, floating.

Lucinda Hutton is standing in his living room. She's wearing tight faded blue jeans and a long baggy sweater, navy blue with the silhouette of a snow scene sweeping across the front under a sequined starry sky. Strings of tiny silvery stars dangle from each earlobe, peeking out from a cloud of black curls. She matches his tree perfectly.

For a moment, he feels frozen in time, unable to look backward or move forward. She is here, and there is only now, and now is a watershed moment, whether he likes it or not. Nothing that follows will resemble anything that came before, and he has no idea what the after will look like. He feels queasy. 

“Is this someone else's apartment?” Lucy asks, snapping him out of it.

“Why would you ask that?”

“You could have borrowed someone else's place to trick me. Or rented. Airbnb, VRBO.”

“Are you just spouting off strings of letters now? You sound like you're having a stroke.” He feels like he's having a stroke. “And no, that's crazy.”

“What's crazy is that you have throw pillows.” She picks one up and presses her fingers into it, like she's testing her own senses, then presses it against her cheek. “You can see how I'm struggling here.”

They stare at each other for a long moment, her standing next to his couch with his pillow against her face, and she has broken his brain. It takes him a minute to recover.

“I guess I can understand how the proper use of a couch, for comfort and leisure, might trip you up,” he finally says, falling back into their usual cutting banter. “No unwieldy piles preventing you from sitting down. It probably doesn't even look like a couch to you.”

She sits on the couch then, not like a normal person who's actually planning on staying would sit on a couch, but like she's testing it. Like she's never seen a couch before. She bounces a little, leans back, sits forward again, spreads her fingers across the material, inspects the seams on the cushions. He'd think it was weird, except that he'd probably do something similar if he had the opportunity to inspect her furniture with this level of detail.

While she's busy with that, Josh picks up the bag she'd discarded by the door—it's bigger than a purse, more like a reusable shopping bag with a snowman print on it, and it's heavier than he expects.

“What's this? Surveillance equipment? Explosives?”

“It's absurd, is what it is. My parents raised me too well to show up empty-handed on a holiday. Don't take it personally.”

“I'll be sure not to.” He peeks inside, intrigued. There's a wrapped gift on top and he takes it out, shifting it from side to side, hearing pieces rattling inside like Legos. Mystifying.

“Coal, I assume.”

Her mouth twitches. “That would be more appropriate, if only I had a supply of coal lying around my apartment.”

It doesn't really matter what's in the box. She brought him something. She's here.

And she has also brought strawberries, shortbread, and wine, he finds.

 _Interesting_.

“Don't even say anything about the strawberries,” she warns.

“Did I say anything?”

“I have to have strawberries on Christmas.” Her voice has stiffened with defensiveness. “We always do.”

“Of course you have strawberries on Christmas.” He's only echoing what she has just said, but Lucy shoots him a sharp glare as if he's accusing her of suspect behavior. If only she knew—he already has a quart, purchased at their peak price in the middle of winter, because he was going to eat them while thinking of her. Now that's suspect behavior.

She has started rifling through his stack of magazines with the attention to detail of a forensic examiner.

“Okay. Well.” He clears his throat, trying to get a grip, and pushes the gift in his hand toward her. “Put this under the tree. I'll take these to the kitchen. I'd say make yourself comfortable, but … um.”

She looks up at him, saucer-eyed, like a young child who's been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. He turns away to take the rest of the bag to the kitchen, where he can give in to the overwhelming urge to smile.

After putting away the incredible evidence that she is definitely staying for dinner, as long as he doesn't scare her away by then, he decides to put the kettle on for tea. While waiting for the water to boil, he gets out two mugs and tea bags: regular Lipton orange pekoe for him, Twinings pomegranate raspberry for her. He lets the tea steep for a full three minutes and forces himself to stay in the kitchen the whole time.

It's better for both of them this way. He's not sure how much he can take of looking at her looking at his things, like he's under a microscope held by a very judgmental, very pretty little scientist.

“I can't believe you have a tree!” she calls from the other room, and the disbelief in her voice is both satisfying and annoying.

“Common Christmas tradition,” he calls back. “Started in Germany. Now everyone does it, even atheists.”

Two sugars for her, and they're done. He leaves them on the counter, takes a deep breath, and walks out to the living room, where he finds her intently reading the bindings on his bookshelf.

“Find what you're looking for?”

She jumps half a foot off the ground, like a character in a cartoon, then shoves whatever book she'd been inspecting back into the bookcase.

“I'm just wondering where you keep your medieval torture devices.”

“Oh, those are in the bedroom,” he quips.

She looks around for a door and takes a step in that direction, but he steps into her path. “On a first date, Shortcake? Not so fast.”

He almost laughs at the horrified look on her face.

“Lucinda. It was a joke.”

She takes a step back. “Of course it was. Because we're not … this isn't … I'm just here to … ”

He blinks back the absurd burst of disappointment he feels. “Covert ops. I get it. Hey, I made tea. It's in the kitchen, where I'm going to be making dinner. When you're done being weird, feel free to come drink it.”

“Oh ...” she trails off, and looks around uncertainly, like she needs a moment to adjust to the fact that this might be more than a covert ops visit.

“Take your time.”

Before she has a chance to respond, he retreats into the kitchen and starts putting ingredients on the counter. When he's digging out the roast pan, he hears her footsteps on the linoleum and smiles into the cupboard before standing upright.

She's standing in the doorway, fidgeting.

“What are you wearing?” she asks. “That’s not your Friday shirt.”

He’s amused that she has his shirts memorized, and then uncomfortable as he turns to face her and her eyes roam freely over the surface area of his sweater—his arms, his chest, his stomach. 

“Believe it or not, I don’t wear my work clothes on my days off.” He lets his own eyes travel down her jean-clad legs, the pants he specifically requested yesterday (not that he thinks she’s wearing them for him). She looks casual. Cute. He might use the adjective _cuddly_ if he were feeling particularly self-destructive. “What are _you_ wearing?”

She folds her arms across her chest and pointedly ignores the question. “If I stay, can we reinstate our ceasefire?” she asks instead.

“You mean now that you're done ransacking my apartment? Sure, that sounds fair.”

“I mean it. No arguing. No mind games.”

“Well, that doesn't sound very festive.” He's not even sure why he's fighting her on this, except that he fights her on everything. It's what they do. And he's not sure he knows how to be around her any other way.

“It's the point of the season. Peace on Earth? Goodwill toward men? And women, presumably.”

He folds his arms over his chest, raising his eyebrows at her, then counters, “Reindeer games. Ring a bell?”

She huffs. “Reindeer games were mean. The reindeer were bullies. That's the whole point of the song. Have you even seen the movie?”

“Maybe they weren't bullies. They were … exclusive. Picky about who they wanted to hang out with. And when Rudolph proved himself worthy, he leaped at the opportunity to join their exclusive club. It was his privilege.”

He's impressed with himself for turning that back around, and he's pretty sure that she's a little impressed too, not that she would admit it.

“So it's a privilege to play games with you?”

Josh turns back toward the counter. “You said it. Go, sit. I'll heat your tea back up since you dawdled so much.” 

He zaps her mug in the microwave for twenty seconds and then sets it on the tiny kitchen table that would serve as his dining area, if he didn't eat most of his meals on the couch.

She is still gaping at him from the doorway. “Sit,” he says. “I didn't poison it. It's tea. Two sugars.”

She takes a seat and picks up the mug, eyeing it dubiously.

“How do you know how I take my tea?”

He raises his eyebrows. “How many hours have we spent sitting across from each other?”

“Oh.” She raises it to her lips and takes a careful sip. “That doesn't explain why you have my favorite kind of tea here.”

He shrugs, holding her gaze until she looks away. Let her draw her own conclusions.

“What are you making?”

“Cornish game hens, Brussels sprouts, acorn squash.”

“Wow. And you're sure you have enough? You didn't even know I was coming.”

“Plenty. I was going to cook a lot of food and have leftovers.”

“But now you won't have leftovers.”

“It sounds like you're going to owe me dinner.” He watches her mouth fall open and presses his lips together. “Don't look so scared. I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to collect.”

“I would offer to help but I have no idea what you're doing,” she says, eyeing the array of food items on the counter with a hungry gleam in her eye. “What are you doing? Can I help?”

“You made twelve dozen cookies this week. Just sit.” He preheats the oven and starts preparing the hens: olive oil, salt, pepper. He pushes some orange slices and quartered onions into the cavities and throws more in the roasting pan around them.

“I was probably going to have chips and salsa for dinner,” Lucy muses, watching him pull ingredients out for the marinade.

“Well, I'm glad I could save you from that atrocity.” 

He can feel her eyes on him as he works, mixing a sauce of sherry, chicken broth, and mustard to baste the hens with, and then cutting open and gutting two acorn squash. Normally, he would just roast them with a drop of olive oil, but today he puts a dab of butter and brown sugar in each (who says he doesn’t know how to celebrate?), then washes his hands so he can pick up his mug of tea.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Lucy asks suddenly, and he almost chokes on it.

“What? Sure, I locked her in the bedroom so I could spend today with you. Why do you ask?”

“This apartment. And there's a present under the tree. It looks about the size of … you know, something you might get a girlfriend.”

“I don't have a girlfriend.”

“Oh.”

He waits for a biting comment on the reasons for his lacking love life, but it never comes.

The oven beeps, and he puts the roasting pans in, side by side.

“Do you?” he asks, not looking at her as he stands back up. He might as well ask. She gave him an opening.

“Do I …?”

“A girlfriend, a boyfriend, an especially close relationship with your doorman. You know.”

She snorts, and the noise is somehow cute. “How would I meet anyone? I spend all my days with you. And my days off now too, apparently.”

“I see,” he says, a warmth spreading in his chest. The game they are playing today is so, so dangerous. For him, at least.

It's not time to put the Brussels sprouts in yet, so he picks up his tea again. It's lukewarm, but he's not sure he cares enough at the moment to do anything about that, so he just drinks, thinking.

“What was that about my apartment?” he asks.

“What about what?”

“A moment ago. You said you thought I had a girlfriend because of my apartment.”

“Oh. You know what I mean.”

He narrows his eyes at her. “I'm not sure I do.”

“This whole place. It doesn't really look like you. Does it?”

He likes the way she's looking at him just now, like she's trying to figure him out. “What do you mean? Everything here is mine.”

“It's not what I pictured. Not that I've spent any time picturing your apartment. But it's so nice. And you're so ...”

“Not nice,” he fills in robotically, as she frowns at him. “As it turns out, even people who are not nice can pick out a nice couch. The two don't really correlate. Take your apartment for example. You're a burst of sunshine on a cloudy day, and yet ...”

He can practically see the gears turning, as she figures out whether to be pleased by the compliment to herself, or outraged at the insult to her living space. It's a perfectly calibrated hit to her equilibrium, if that's what he was going for.

He's not sure what he's going for today.

His phone rings, and he turns away to look at the screen, sighing when he sees who it is. “Sorry, I should get this. It's my mother.” He's not looking directly at Lucy, but he feels her jump to high alert. “Hi, Mom. Merry Christmas.”

It's a fairly one-sided conversation for a while, as his mother gives him the rundown of who is there, what they're cooking, what this person and that person had to say about his absence, and how much she says they all miss him (he will believe that about his mom, and maybe his brother under normal circumstances, but this year, who knows).

While he listens and says passably appropriate things, he watches Lucy, who is drinking her tea with such focused concentration, he's sure she's only pretending not to pay attention. 

“I know things are, well, what they are,” his mom is saying, “but I still don't like to think of you alone on Christmas.”

“I'm not alone. Lucy's here.” The words drop out in self-defense. And honestly, the fact of her sitting in his kitchen is so close to the surface, practically buzzing out of his pores, it was inevitable it was going to slip out.

At the sound of her name, Lucy's hand jerks so that a little tea splashes out of her cup, and he hands her a towel, which she uses to dab at the table while making wide-eyed faces at him.

“Lucy, the one you're always mentioning, the girl from work?”

He's not always mentioning her. He's pretty sure that's not true.

“Yes, that Lucy,” he mumbles. That Lucy's mouth drops open, and she mouths the words back to him: _that Lucy?_ He looks down and away so she doesn't see the enjoyment he's getting out of her reaction to being outed to his mother.

He might regret this later, but it's actually a little fun in the meantime.

“Oh,” is all his mom says for a moment, and he almost smiles at how interested she suddenly sounds. “So is she … are you and she …”

Turns out, later is now. _Abort, abort_.

“Yeah, no, we're just making dinner. Do you want to say hi?”

Or, that, apparently.

“Oh! I suppose I could … that would be nice, if you think she won't mind?”

“Yeah, sure, she actually said something the other day about wishing she had the chance to talk to you. Here, I'll put her on.”

“Oh. Did she? Okay, well, then.”

This is probably a bad idea, and he feels truly evil for putting Lucy in this position, but at least his mom has been distracted from worrying about him for a moment. He holds the phone out to Lucy, who has slumped down all the way in her chair, as if that makes her less visible, and is mouthing things like, “ _no_ ,” and “ _why?_ ”

 _Why, indeed_.

He puts his hand over the receiver. “Come on, it'll make her day.”

It's the most backhanded argument he could make, because Lucy is a good person (too good, some might say), and he knows she's physically incapable of saying no to something like that.

With an inaudible groan, she sits up straighter and holds out her hand for the phone.

“Hello!” she says brightly, her smiling game face on, and he feels a moment of guilt for springing this on her. “Yes, merry Christmas to you too.”

She listens for a moment, and he's sorry he can only hear half this conversation. “Just making dinner … Oh, I don't really know, Joshua is doing most of the cooking. He seems like he knows what he's doing … that is too bad … yes, my family is also out of town and I didn't make it home this year, so, um, yeah … yes, it is very nice … next Christmas?” Her voice squeaks, and he wonders what disturbing turn the conversation has taken. “Oh, I don't know … ”

Okay, that's enough of that. Josh holds out his hand. “Oh, I think Josh wants to talk to you again! Yes, it was very nice talking to you … I hope so too … okay, here he is!”

She thrusts the phone at him like a hot potato, and he raises his eyebrows at her as he takes it, and talks to his mom again for another couple minutes. Then he hangs the phone up calmly and starts rinsing the Brussels sprouts, as if nothing unusual has happened.

“She's very nice,” Lucy says.

“You sound surprised.”

She doesn't say anything to that. “Who does she think I am?”

“My coworker. I guess I complain about you sometimes.”

“Hmm,” she says, thoughtfully. 

He concentrates on what he's doing, spreading the Brussels sprouts onto a baking sheet, tossing them with olive oil and salt, conscious of how much wouldn't add up about this whole situation, from Lucy's point of view.

His coworker, Lucy, whom his mother knows by name. His acquaintance, Lucy, who is sitting in his kitchen on a national holiday, while he cooks for her. Obviously, she means nothing to him.

His cheeks feel warm.

“She invited us both for Christmas next year,” Lucy announces suddenly.

“She what?” He almost drops the baking sheet that he has just picked up, and the sprouts that had previously been spaced in an orderly fashion roll around chaotically. He has to put the pan down to set them to rights again.

“Invited us both for Christmas next year,” she repeats unnecessarily, drawing out the words as if he's slow.

“Well, I'm not going. You should, though. You two would probably get along.”

She snorts, and a long beat passes. “Are you sure she knows I'm just your coworker?”

He's silent for a moment and then forces himself to pause what he's doing and look at her. “Who else would you be?”

He holds her eyes, and she looks back, and the moment feels charged with something, as all the possibilities float between them.

She snaps out of it first and shakes her head. “Moms, huh?” She laughs awkwardly. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Nope. Just putting these in the oven.” He does that, bastes the hens again, and then opens a drawer and pulls out a deck of cards, because he's run out of cooking tasks for a while and is going to need something to do with his restless energy.

Armed with the deck, he sits across with her. “What do you want to play?”

The question hangs awkwardly between them for a moment, and he realizes the obvious belatedly—they are always playing something. It’s their comfort zone, if anything at all between them has ever been comfortable.

“War,” she says.

“War?”

“Sure. That's what we play, right?” Her voice wavers slightly with uncertainty, like she's actually asking, but he's already given away too much tonight.

“War, it is,” he says.

He starts shuffling the cards, feeling her eyes on him.

Normally he'd go for something more strategic, but it turns out to be the perfect game for the moment, something he can play mindlessly while driven to distraction. They slap cards down, his deck building, then hers, and back again and so forth, watching each other more than the cards that are flying between them. Every so often, maybe more often than strictly necessarily, their fingers brush in the middle of the table. It's like their entire acquaintance, playing out in rapid fire on the table between them.

He could play this game forever.

When the oven timer goes off her side of the deck is significantly thicker than his, which seems about apropos. He sure feels like she has all the cards.

“Should we set these aside for later?” she asks, as he gets up to flip the timer off.

In answer, he takes the cards from her hand, sets them on top of his in the case, and puts them in the kitchen drawer from whence they came.

“You win. I surrender.”

“I thought we were having fun.” He looks up from where his head is in the oven, and she actually looks disappointed, which is interesting. 

“We were. The game is just over. Aren't you hungry?” He gestures to the dishes he's pulling out of the oven.

“Starving, actually. It smells amazing in here. I'll set the table.”

Before he can shoo her away, she's already springing into action.

“Um, sure. Plates in that cabinet, silverware in the drawer.”

While he waits for her to get plates out, he goes to retrieve the wine and a couple glasses.

“Candles!” Lucy exclaims as she's rummaging in his silverware drawer. “There are candles in here. We should have candles.”

Josh pauses pouring. “Why?” It actually sounds like a nice idea, but it sure puts a different tone on things.

Lucy opens and closes her mouth, like she's just realizing that too, and he lifts his eyebrows at her in a challenge. Let her set that tone if she's going to.

“It's a holiday. It would be more festive.”

The hedging answer deflates him a little, but he nods. “Let there be candlelight.”

He loads their plates up with food and finds a lighter for the pair of candles that Lucy has set in the middle of the table. The kitchen is too bright for them to have much of an effect, so he flips the switch off for the overhead and turns the stove light on instead.

It looks nice. Not just festive, but romantic, he notes uncomfortably. Especially with Lucy, wide eyed and fidgeting—as beautiful as she has ever been, he thinks—as the centerpiece of the little tableau.

They sit down and eye each other awkwardly, as if they haven't sat across from each other like this every workday for all these past months.

Not that this is at all like that, though. It's really not, and he starts to wonder how they'll get through this meal. He's glad they're not sniping at each other for once, but the alternative makes him feel anxious and vulnerable in a way that tempts him to fall back on their usual ways. She sips her wine, and he does the same—maybe it will help.

“I don't know if I've ever had Cornish game hen,” Lucy says, poking at it experimentally. “It's like a tiny chicken. It's almost too adorable to eat.”

“In my experience, cuteness is usually inversely proportional to size.” When she looks up sharply, he meets her eyes as if he hasn't said anything notable. “The meat is more tender. Try it.”

They dig in, and he's gratified to see she attacks the meal with her usual appetite, making satisfied sounds.

“This is really good. I can't believe you cooked this.”

Josh shrugs, secretly pleased.

A few minutes later: “I don't think I've ever seen you eat anything but mints before. I thought maybe you just … depowered and plugged in for the night.”

The jibe seems almost playful, like a less heated version of their usual interplay, and his brain runs away with a fantasy of what they could be like: bantering, teasing, playing. It's so intoxicating that he almost forgets to respond to her. “I eat.”

“And well, apparently.” She gives him a considering look. “What if you were here alone? Would you still have done all of this?”

For a moment he wonders if she's asking if he did all this for her, and he's not sure how to answer that, so he answers cautiously.

“It would still be Christmas.”

She frowns, furrowing her brow. “I guess. It seems like a lot of work for one person.”

“You don't think I'm worth it?”

Lucy shrugs. “I didn't say that. It's just that you're here by yourself, at least you were planning to be, so it seems ...”

“Like I should be eating chips and salsa on Christmas?” he finishes for her, feeling prickly under her questioning. “Yes, you're right, I'm the only one here. But I'm the only one here. So if I don't cook, no one else is going to. I still have to eat, and I prefer to eat well, even if I am, as you like to point out, alone. You know what your problem is—”

She throws up a hand, silencing him. “My problem? We're having a nice meal, and you're going to tell me what my problem is? I knew there was going to be a catch.”

 _Shit_. That took a turn he hadn't intended. Josh stares at her for a moment, willing her to calm down—willing himself to calm down. This whole night, opening himself up to her like this after staying locked down for so long, isn't easy for him.

“That came out wrong. Look … you're in my apartment, studying and critiquing my every lifestyle choice, and maybe I'm feeling a little defensive.” She nods, seeming to accept that, and he continues. “I was only going to observe that you do a lot for other people. You bake, you allow others to push deadlines until you have to stay late, you pick up Helene's dry cleaning, which is so out of the realm of your actual job duties … ” He trails off as he feels the rant start to build and regroups. “It's a lot. You could do less of that, and more for yourself, is all I was going to say.”

 _You're worth it_ , are the sappy words that he stops short of saying, but he hopes she gets the point.

Her mouth twists as she grudgingly considers what he's saying. “I suppose I could cook more often.”

“I'm not suggesting ...”

“Or find a guy to cook for me,” she says more cheerfully.

Josh raises his eyebrows at that, but she pushes past it, the latest in a series of odd moments, and changes the subject.

“But you do have someone. Your mother, she sounded like she really wanted you with her. Why aren't you with your family on Christmas?”

“You're full of questions tonight. Just eat, would you?”

She scoops out a big bite of squash, demonstrating that she is, in fact, eating, but unfortunately she's been known to multitask.

“You don't want to tell me, which only makes me want to know more. And you know that the more I want something ...”

“The more annoying you get,” he finishes for her. “Okay, look. I'll make you a deal. For everything I tell you about my life, you have to tell me something about your life. Something about growing up on the strawberry farm.”

“But that's not fair!”

He ignores her outburst momentarily to refill their wine glasses, reaching his arm out to grab the bottle that's sitting on the counter (he can reach it easily—there are advantages to being so tall and ungainly) and pours the rest of the bottle out between them.

“I believe, actually, it's the definition of fair.”

“But you only want to know so you can make fun of me.”

He narrows his eyes at her. “And I suppose you only want to know about my family life for completely altruistic reasons.”

Her eyes go wide and innocent, which tells him she's guilty as hell. “I'm curious.”

“As a cat. And I happen to like strawberries.” He pauses to take a drink of his wine and then swirls it around in his glass. “That's the deal, take it or leave it.”

She'll take it. He knows her well enough by now to know she won’t be able to resist taking it.

“Okay,” she agrees with some evident wariness. "But you go first."

“Right.” He can feel bits of his own bravado falling off, and his palms start to sweat now that he actually has to tell her something. This is new, and he's not good at this sort of thing. “My parents are both doctors … surgeons, actually, retired now. ”

“And?”

“And ...” He hasn't warmed enough to this to get into his own story, so he stalls and elaborates on his parents' careers instead. “My mom did mostly hearts and transplants … long-term cases. She was all about patient care. Each person she helped had a family and a story, and she was very invested.”

“I like your mom.”

“Yeah, you would. She cares a lot. Which made her job difficult for her sometimes.”

“I can see how that would. And your dad?”

“My dad … Dad is what you would call a cutter. ER injuries, car crashes, knife wounds. In and out and never see 'em again, and I think that's the way he liked it.”

“Sounds like a really warm guy.”

“Yep,” he agrees, not making eye contact anymore. “You know what they say. You've met the chip, and he's the block.”

When he dares to look back up, her gaze is intent and not unkind. As she opens her mouth to ask him something else, he jumps in. “Your turn. Tell me something about the strawberry farm I've been dying to hear about.”

Lucy snorts, and because it's Lucy, the snort is attractive. “You've been dying to hear about it?”

“Not literally, obviously. It's called a figure of speech.” Almost literally, though.

“Okay. Um.” She scrunches up her face and then relaxes it again. “It's called Sky Diamond Strawberries.”

“Like the song?” Josh asks her. “Lucy in the sky with diamonds, right?”

“Yes. Most people don't notice that.”

“I'm not most people.” Most people don't think about her twenty-four-seven.

“That, you're not.” She goes on to tell him a sweet-sounding story about a journalist who wrote a feature story about a farmer and ended up falling in love with him. So her mother was a writer. That would explain the blog.

“That sounds nice,” he says. “I'm not even sure exactly how my parents came to be together. Their families knew each other, I suppose.”

“That doesn't count,” Lucy interjects. “As something you tell me about yourself? And it's your turn. So, your parents are doctors.”

“Were. They're retired.”

“Were doctors. What does that have to do with you not going home?”

Josh sighs. “Because I'm not a doctor. It's a bit of a sore point.”

“With your father?”

He nods, focusing intently on his plate. “Yes.”

“Oh. Did you go to medical school?” He notices the tone of her questions have taken on a softer edge than before.

“I did, for a while. But it wasn’t for me.” Josh shrugs, like it means less than it does. “And so I went to business school instead.”

“You have your MBA,” Lucy says. “He should be proud of you because you have your MBA.”

Josh blinks at her unexpected defense of him. “You don't know my dad,” he says quietly, and turns his attention to his plate uncomfortably.

If this is what it takes—giving these insights to himself in exchange for little pieces of her, he doesn't want to think of what it would take to get all of her.

“He sounds like an asshole,” Lucy says suddenly.

“Yeah, well, chip, block.”

“Stop that. You don't have to be like him.” Lucy sounds angry, but not at him, for once, and it's nice. Maybe this doesn't have to be so awful. “I bet he never cooked a nice holiday meal for a needy coworker.”

“Maybe for my mom,” Josh says absently, before realizing the implication of what he's said. “Enough about me, it's your turn.”

“Oh, I don't know.” She fidgets, wrapping a strand of hair around her finger self-consciously. “After that, it feels silly to tell you more about strawberries.”

“But I love strawberries. Please, tell me. What's the farm like? What's your favorite kind?”

And miraculously, she begins to tell him all about strawberries, like she's rewarding him for confiding something meaningful to her. As they finish dinner, clean up, and do the dishes, she continues talking, offering little details about the farm, and doesn't push him any further on his own life. Perhaps she's sensed that he's reached his limit for the night, and they have both stopped keeping score.

The kitchen is clean and they are halfway through the second bottle of wine when his phone vibrates again, breaking the easy mood they've managed to create.

Josh reaches for it on the counter behind him and glances at the screen, annoyed.

“You can answer it, I don't mind,” Lucy says.

“No. It's … my brother. It can wait.”

The phone stops vibrating, and immediately a text pops onto the screen: “ _Hey, give me a call when you have a chance. I have news. Merry Christmas_.”

Josh stares at the screen, a sinking feeling in his stomach. It's Christmas … and he doesn't have any particular reason to jump to this conclusion, but he feels like he knows what that news is going to be.

“Do you need to call him back?” Lucy's voice jostles him from his thoughts. She looks concerned, like she can tell something is wrong. “I can step into the other room.”

Josh shakes his head, shakes himself. “No. No. I'm not … I'm with you right now. I'll call him back tomorrow. Probably just calling to say … Merry Christmas or whatever.”

Lucy nods once, although he can tell she suspects that something is up. He doesn't want to get into it tonight, though.

“We should open presents,” he says, eager to move onto something else.

“Presents?” Lucy echoes. “Oh! Right, I got you something. Yeah, okay, we can do that.”

They go out to the tree, which is shining brightly in the dimly lit room, and crouch down next to it. Josh is still lowering himself down from his great height when Lucy picks up the box she brought with her and pushes it into his hands. “It's not … I didn't have time to go shopping or anything … not that I would have … but I … well, you can just open it.”

Josh settles onto the floor and stares at the package, his brain still shifting gears from presents in the abstract, as a distraction, and actual presents as something they are exchanging now.

She got him something. The paper has a vintage look to it, adorned with tiny Smurfs in Santa hats, of all things, and there's a single strand of ribbon tied around it and curled on the ends like a tiny bow.

All for someone she doesn't even like. It's …

“Josh?”

“Right. Okay.” He slides the ribbon off and turns the box over to carefully extract the pieces of tape.

“Of course you're one of those people who won't just rip the paper,” she says, sounding a little impatient but also, he thinks, amused.

He raises an eyebrow at her, registering the way she's fidgeting as if she's nervous, and then returns to his task, slowly, methodically peeling the untorn paper away to reveal the contents. It's a moment he wants to draw out. Before looking at it, he sets the paper aside. It's weird and cute, sort of like someone he knows. Finally he looks at what she got him.

Boggle. He shakes the box, affirming the contents match the exterior. He turns it over, and the box is still sealed around the edges. She gave him a game of Boggle.

“Because we play games,” Lucy says in a rush. “I thought an actual game … and we work at a publishing house, so, words. And I had an extra one in my closet because someone gave it to me, but I still have my game from childhood. No one needs two Boggles.”

As he turns his face up toward her, he can feel the corner of his lips turning up of their own volition, a sight that seems to make her startle backward.

“I imagine not,” he says, somewhat in awe, and a little unsure of just why. It was thoughtful, that was it. She had put thought into it, for him. And it seems personal … specific to the two of them. “Thank you,” he says, sincerely.

“You're welcome,” she says, and he sees that she's blushing, and he finds himself smiling again. She stares back at him, softer and more open than their usual stares, and he ducks his head again self-consciously.

He can do this, he thinks.

Josh sets the game down next to him and picks up the other little box under the tree, holding onto it for a moment as he steels himself, before holding it out to her.

“That's for me?”

He almost laughs at her. “Yes, of course. Who else is here?”

“No one, I just … I didn't think you got me anything.”

He remembers what she said about it earlier, when she asked him if he had a girlfriend. “It's nothing … it's not much, just something I've had for awhile. I didn't know if I'd have a chance to give it to you, but it seemed like the right time.” He gulps, looking down at it. “As good a time as any, at least.”

He holds it out to her again, and gingerly, uncertainly, Lucy takes it. She turns it over in her hands and seems to test its weight, like she's trying to divine what's in it without opening it.

“You can open it,” Josh says . “Some people even like to tear the paper, I hear.”

With a nervous laugh, she starts to unwrap it, more slowly and carefully than he would have expected from someone who had just been teasing him about his own methodical approach.

Under the paper is a plain white box, which she contemplates for a moment before looking inside, and he feels like he's holding his breath waiting.

His mom had emailed him the shopping link about two months into his new job, with the brief message, “Peace offering for your work friend?” And he hadn't been able to resist, even back then when he thought he would almost certainly never give it to her.

It's a Strawberry Shortcake ornament, with pink freckled cheeks, big blue eyes, and a floppy polka dot hat, holding a basket of strawberries tied with a green ribbon. It's about as adorable as a fictional character designed for young girls can be.

Given Lucy's insistence on disliking the nickname, there's just as much chance that she'll see it as an affront, more of him teasing her, rather than as the neon sign it feels like to him. He's not sure at this exact moment which reaction he's hoping for. It feels like he's bracing himself, either way.

Slowly, Lucy lifts the small figurine out of the box and furrows her brow, studying it. She turns it over in her hand, suspiciously, as if it might be booby-trapped in some way. Then she lifts her narrowed eyes to him and studies his face with a similar intentness. She stares at the ornament again, clearly unsure of what to make of it, or undecided how she feels about it, and then back at him.

“I collect Smurfs,” she says, finally.

It's so not what he expected her to say that it takes him a moment to react. “Smurfs?”

“The little blue guys with the white hats, from the cartoon?”

“I know what Smurfs are,” he says, confused. Was he supposed to get her a Smurf? How would he have known that?

Her eyes linger on the ornament again, and she chews the inside of her lip before drawing in a deep breath and letting it out again.

“My dad used to make a big delivery out of state once a month, where he had to stay overnight, and on his way back, he would stop at this one gas station and buy me a Smurf.” She pauses, clearly wavering on whether she should be telling him this, whatever this is, and he waits her out. “It meant a lot to me because it meant he was thinking about me.”

 _Oh_.

She lifts her face to his again, and this time her eyes are round, open, vulnerable. He holds perfectly still while they seem to search his face, looking for something. He has no idea what she sees.

 _Yes, I was thinking about you. I'm always thinking about you. I'm obsessed with you_.

Is it written all over his face?

Suddenly, so fast he doesn't realize it’s happening, she leans forward, up on her knees, and presses her lips against his cheek, just above the corner of his mouth. And then just as quickly, she's pulling back from him—her mouth forming a perfect shocked “o,” like she can't believe what she has done any more than he can. They're both frozen in time, unable to process or move, and then she's scrambling to her feet, and he's scrambling up after her.

“I'm sorry, I shouldn't … I didn't … clearly I had too much wine, and I should … where's my coat?”

Josh's mouth is dry, his mind is stuck, replaying the feeling of her lips on his skin, and he wonders what would happen if he leaned forward, took hold of her, and kissed her back for real. But she's turned away from him now, looking this way and that, everywhere but at him, and clearly the moment is gone.

She can't just leave, though. Like this. After that. Whatever that was.

“Wait,” he says, without a plan.

“Coat closet,” she says, like she just figured out the great mystery of where her coat might be.

“Wait. Lucy.” About twelve different reasons flit through his head for why she shouldn't go just now, and he seizes on number eleven as the most airtight. “You said you had too much wine. You … you shouldn't drive right now.”

It stops her, all right, halfway to the door. Her shoulders sag, and she has this absolutely desperate look in her eyes. It kills him.

“Look, it's no big deal.” No big deal, right. He's practically shaking. “Just … sit down. We don't have to talk, we can just … We'll watch a movie. A movie. Do you like _A Christmas Story_? It's always playing all day.”

“Everyone likes that movie.” Her voice sounds small and faraway, and he has the urge to pull her to him, to make her feel okay about this. But he doesn't think it would work that way.

He doesn't know what this is yet, if it means anything at all, but these last few hours have provided more reason than he's ever had to hope, and yet it feels hopelessly fragile. He needs to think … he needs to be careful and not screw this up.

“Okay then!” he says, in a loud, bright voice he has never used before. “Make yourself comfortable. The remote's right there. I'll be right back.”

He has no idea where he's going. He just needs a minute. And he thinks that she probably does too.

“Oh, but, you, um ...” Lucy trails off, staring at him, and he stares back at her, unable to breathe. Her cheeks have taken on the same bright pink hue as those on the Shortcake ornament.

“I … what?” he asks faintly.

“Your cheek. You have something. Just there.”

He raises his fingers to touch the spot, and then draws them away again quickly, like he might accidentally erase the evidence. _She kissed him. That happened._

His breath comes out in a whoosh. “Yeah. Okay.”

He turns away and shuts himself in the bathroom, where instead of wiping it off, he stares at it in the mirror. It's not much. Most of her usual flame red lipstick had rubbed off during dinner, and it's just a light smudge, just above and to the right of his mouth. If he had his phone in the bathroom, he might take a picture so that he could prove to himself it hadn't just been a figment of his imagination.

So she liked it—the ornament. Enough to thank him like this. And maybe she likes him—or at least, she wouldn't have done this if she was completely repulsed by him. Of course, she'd tried to flee right afterward, but …

He thinks back over the moments leading up to it, the story she had told. She hadn't been mad at him over the nickname. She had understood it meant something. She had figured out that he had been thinking about her.

 _She knows_. She _might_ know. The possibility is exhilarating and terrifying. His insides are doing things he's unable to diagnose with his limited medical training. He might be having heart palpitations like a character in a British melodrama. 

He splashes some cold water on his face, towels off, and goes back out to the living room. Lucy is sitting on one end of the couch and has the movie turned on. It has just started.

Feeling her eyeballs trailing after him around the room, Josh goes to the kitchen and gets two glasses of ice water. After setting them on the coffee table, he goes to the hall closet and pulls out a couple blankets, setting one next to her and keeping the other for himself. Unable to think of anything else that might make her more comfortable, he turns down the last light and sits, not on the far end of the couch, but a few feet away. She clearly needs her space, but he doesn't want her to think he needs his.

It's a good thing he's seen this movie more than a few times, because he doesn't see much of it tonight. Instead he mentally relives scattered moments from the night, from yesterday, from the past six months as a planet orbiting her sun. All interspersed with the imprint of a new sensation, the half second of her mouth touching the skin near his mouth.

Intermittently, he covertly watches her watching the movie, or lets her watch him pretending to watch the movie. Sometimes, they abandon all pretense and just watch each other, their vision lit only by the flickering television screen and the tree lights. And in between, he lets himself imagine a scenario where they're watching a movie together, just like this, because it's something they do, like normal people.

 _You’ll shoot your eye out_ , he warns himself, but can’t help wondering.

At some point the movie ends and starts again, and he thinks she might try to leave, but instead he watches her eyes drift shut. A short time later, her breathing has evened out and her body has started to slide sideways into the couch cushions.

For some time after that, he is motionless, mesmerized by Lucy, asleep on his couch. At the start of this day, at the start of this week, from the first time he laid eyes on her, could he have imagined this is where it would end up? Hardly anything has even happened, but he is overwhelmed by this sweet sliver of possibility.

Feeling creepy for watching her sleep, he makes himself get up, and after a moment's awkward consideration, he gently lifts her legs from the floor to the couch and adjusts the blanket over them. Her breathing changes momentarily, but instead of waking, her head slides the rest of the way down to the couch cushion, and she snuggles deeper into the blanket.

His eyes drifting to her lips, Josh touches the place on his cheek where they had touched, and then he goes to bed.


	3. Chapter 3

After a restless night, during which any sleep he had gotten was probably thanks to the wine, Josh wakes up early and startles, remembering. He sits up and listens, hearing nothing, and wonders what he should do. He doesn't want to wake her if she's still sleeping. But he doesn't want her to start freaking out about waking up alone in his apartment, and he knows she's an early riser. They're both always in a race to get to the office before anyone else does.

The second concern manages to outweigh the first, and he gets up, dresses quickly, brushes his teeth. He'll go to the kitchen and start the coffee maker. She'll wake up to the smell of coffee and the soothing sound of a percolator—a bit of comforting normalcy to help overcome this strange situation.

He pictures her padding into the kitchen to find him making coffee and eggs, and he's ridiculously, absurdly in love with the idea.

_Good morning, Lucy. Did you sleep well?_

He can do this.

Quietly, Josh turns the doorknob and slips through his bedroom door. He can see the back of the couch and resists the urge to check on her. The last thing he wants is for her to wake up to him standing over her.

But as he turns toward the kitchen, he catches sight of the coat closet door—standing open—and his stomach drops. Quickly, he changes course and rushes toward it, but he can already see what's missing—her tiny coat, which had hung next to his, is gone.

Swearing under his breath, Josh pushes his feet into his shoes without lacing them up and grabs his keys and his coat, shrugging into it while he bursts into the hallway. Skipping the elevator, he pushes into the stairwell and takes the stairs two or three at a time until he reaches the lobby. There, he stops short, because through the glass, he can see her car in its parking space. Confused, mind racing, he tries to think of a scenario where she's still asleep on the couch upstairs but her coat isn't in the closet.

He pushes through the door, but as soon as he's outside, he can tell the engine is silent. And then he sees her, a hunched silhouette just visible behind the wheel in the dim light of early morning. As he approaches, more slowly, she turns her head, startles, and watches him, making no move to roll down her window. Now he's standing next to her vehicle, and they're locked in a staring contest.

Cautiously, like the car itself might spook, Josh reaches for the door handle. It's not locked, so he gently pulls the door open and crouches down next to her, careful to keep his knees out of the snow.

And he looks at her. And she looks back, her eyes wide and shiny and her chin just starting to quiver.

 _Oh, Shortcake_.

Josh swallows.

“It's a lot warmer upstairs,” he says, breaking the silence as gently as he can.

Lucy squeezes her eyes shut and slouches down in the seat, defeatedly. “I left my can of starter fluid at home. It won't turn over.”

“I see.” Josh pauses, his breath coming out in cold puffs. “And where were you off to before 6 a.m. on a Saturday?”

Home, obviously. Away from him.

“Oh, you know.” She opens her eyes but keeps them focused straight ahead, through the windshield instead of at him. “I thought I might go over the bridge, out of the city, drive until I meet up with 66. And then just keep driving … until I run out of gas in a tiny town off the highway where no one knows who I am, adopt a new identity, maybe get a job as a waitress at the truck stop where everyone's just passing through. Or maybe there’ll be a surly local mechanic who will take me under his wing and teach me all about fixing cars. That would be useful.” She hits her steering wheel for emphasis.

“Lucy.” His voice is just a whisper. She's so skittish, so jumpy, that even though she's sitting here in a car that won't start, he feels like she could slip through his fingers at any moment, so he puts his hand lightly over hers, as if he can anchor her in place.

When she doesn't snatch it away immediately, he wraps his hand around hers, her small, perfect fingers tucked into his larger ones. Her skin is cool to the touch in the icy morning, but a warmth spreads through his chest, and he knows.

He is already so far gone, it's not even worth denying anymore. He'll have to quit his job over this, one way or another. The certainty of it settles into his gut, and it isn't as terrible as he thought it might be.

There's only one thing to do now.

“Are you hungry?” His voice sounds low and gravelly to his own ears, and he clears his throat.

She blinks at him in confusion and then nods mutely, her eyes flicking between his face and his hand wrapped around hers.

Briefly, he thinks of the breakfast he had pictured making her, but something tells him she might feel better in neutral territory at this point.

“There's a cafe a couple blocks from here that should be open in a few minutes. We're going to go get some food, and then we'll figure out your car situation. And then we'll figure out the rest.” He pauses, takes a deep breath, then says, as much to himself as to her, “It's going to be ok."

After another long moment of staring at him, she nods again, takes her keys out of the ignition, and moves to get out of the car. He pulls her up by the hand he's holding and then lets it drop.

“I have to run up to get my wallet. Do you want to come in out of the cold for a minute?”

“Yeah … um. Actually, I can't go anywhere. I'm a mess.” She shuffles her feet, looking back at her car in distress. If it weren't such a piece of junk, she'd be long gone by now.

God bless a faulty starter coil.

“Then you should definitely come up. Take a few minutes. Freshen up, whatever you need to do.”

He lightly presses his hand against her back, and she starts moving toward his building. He holds the door open for her and they make it through the lobby, and stand mutely as he presses the elevator button.

In the elevator, they face each other.

“What is happening?” she exclaims suddenly, forcefully. It startles him, so much that he smiles, which he guesses he should stop fighting. It's going to take some getting used to that, assuming he has a chance to get used to it. She rubs her eyes like she's waking up from a dream.

“We're going to get breakfast,” he says, even though he knows that's not what she's asking, and that the question is probably rhetorical anyway. “Everything's easier to face on a full stomach.”

He wonders if that's true, or if he's just delaying the inevitable, whatever the end result might be.

But she tilts her head in agreement, seemingly placated.

*****

In his apartment, he points her toward the bathroom. “In the top drawer, left side, you'll find toothpaste and some new toothbrushes. Towels in the closet. Help yourself.”

“You keep extra toothbrushes for all the women who sleep over?”

She seems troubled by that idea, which is oddly encouraging.

“They're from my dentist. He always gives me one at my cleaning, but I use a Sonicare.”

“Hmm.” She sounds noncommittal. “I'll be out in a few minutes.”

He's thirsty after his mad dash to the street so he goes into the kitchen to get a glass of water. While there, he washes out their wine glasses from the previous night before returning to the living room to find Lucy collapsed on the couch, her head leaning back, so that she's looking up at the ceiling.

“You ready to go?” he asks.

“I was, but now I think I might never leave this couch. I live here now, on this couch cushion. Get me a change-of-address form and have all my mail forwarded.”

Josh laughs. “Okay.”

Lucy startles and looks embarrassed, getting to her feet. “It's just a really comfortable couch, is all,” she mumbles, as if he might have thought she was serious.

Josh rolls his eyes wistfully. “Yeah, I got that.” He picks up her coat from where she's discarded it on the arm of the sofa and holds it up while she slips her arms through, his hands briefly smoothing it over her shoulders before catching himself.

She narrows her eyes and moves away from him as they leave the apartment again. In the elevator and through the lobby, she continues giving him the same look, full of suspicion and something else he can't put a name to.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks finally, after they have emerged onto the street.

“Like what?” she says, her eyes darting away self-consciously.

“Like you think I might poison you.”

“Because you might?” Her voice goes up into a squeak by the end of that three-word statement-question, which she punctuates with a nervous laugh, but he doesn't think it's so amusing.

“Have I not behaved since you got here, Lucy? We played cards. I made you dinner. We watched a movie. We've had a nice time. I thought.”

He's had a nice time, at least, but the butterflies start to churn in his stomach as he waits to hear whether she has just been enduring him out of … curiosity, or pity, or something.

Lucy looks into the distance as they walk, her arms crossed tightly across her chest. “It has been nice.”

“Okay, so …”

“I just can't seem to shake this feeling that this has all been some kind of elaborate prank. I'm like Charlie with the football to you. If I let down my guard, you're going to … I don't know. Take it all away. Use it all to humiliate me. Or something.”

“I'm not … ” Josh starts to object.

“But you are. You are who you are. And I am ... and we are … ” She trails off in obvious frustration, before attempting to finish the sentence, to supply an answer for that million-dollar question of who _they are_. “We're two people who can't stand each other, who fight all the time, who make each other miserable on a regular basis. Oil and water, orange juice and toothpaste, pick your cliché. One or two days trying to be nice to each other, in the spirit of the season or whatever, doesn't change that. I don't have any illusions about Monday.”

Josh feels her outburst like a physical blow, one that breaks into his smooth stride and almost knocks him sideways. “Of course not,” he bites out.

The words feel bitter, like old coffee that he wants to spit out, and for a minute, he dwells in that bitterness, one that he's grown so accustomed to living within. But then his eyes slide sideways, drawn back to her profile, and he falters again. He's known her long enough, has been watching her closely for long enough, that he can easily detect the tension across her shoulders, the way the left side of her face twitches in discomfort. And he heard the wobble in her voice when she said those devastating things.

She's scared.

An uncomfortable slideshow of thoughtless digs, escalating arguments, and wounded or furious facial expressions flashes through his brain. Their dynamic has seemed to him like a kind of prolonged and especially torturous foreplay, charged with an undercurrent of unresolved sexual and romantic tension (on his part, at least). And while laced with the bitterness that it would probably never come to anything, he's always enjoyed the regular hours of his days, his weeks, spent playing with her—the worthiest adversary he could have possibly dreamed up.

Now he forces himself to take a step back and wonders how their strange interplay, full of sharp banter, hidden motives, and notably devoid of much friendliness, has seemed to her all this time—that she sees him like this, someone she needs to guard herself against.

He continues to mull this over as they walk in silence.

When they've almost arrived at the cafe, Lucy stops short in front of a large slushy puddle that has accumulated on the sidewalk leading to the doorway. He can easily step over it with his longer legs, but it seems impossibly rude to do so while she would have to track through the snow around it, so after a second of hesitation, he puts his hands on her waist, hoists her into the air, and sets her safely down on the other side.

“I'm sorry,” he says, as her feet touch the ground.

She stares at him with her mouth open. “No, you ... I didn't want to get wet.”

“For making you feel that way,” he says seriously, searching her eyes for understanding, while they seem to search his for something else. “I'm genuinely sorry for making you feel that way.”

“Oh.” Her reply is barely an exhale, a visible puff that lingers in the cold air between them.

Lucy swallows, and realizing he hasn't let go of her yet, he lets his hands fall away from her sides.

“Hey, um,” Josh forces himself to say, feeling like he owes this to her. “I should tell you. I have a can of starter fluid. In the emergency kit in my trunk. Or if that doesn’t work, I could drive you home.”

“Why …” Her brow furrows in confusion. “You’re trying to get rid of me?”

“What? No.” Josh speaks so vehemently that she jerks back a little, and he softens his tone. “I just thought you should know you’re not trapped here. You can go any time you want.”

Lucy continues to stare at him, and a deflated feeling settles over him as he resigns himself to the fact that she might actually take him up on it. And he will never get his chance. He will have to quit first thing Monday and never see her again.

“I’m hungry, and we’re here. Let’s eat,” she says finally.

Josh nods, his execution stayed for the time being, and steps forward to hold the door to the cafe open, following her through.

A waitress in the back of the cafe waves him into the small but mostly empty room, so he leads Lucy toward his usual booth, a barely there hand on her back. They take off their coats and sit down across from each other.

Lucy glances around the almost empty room. “Looks like normal people are staying home and eating leftover pie for breakfast.”

“What pie?”

“Exactly.” She raises her eyebrows at him significantly.

It takes him a moment to adjust to this new tone in the conversation.

“Are you impugning my Christmas dinner menu?”

“I would never,” she shoots back saucily, and Josh hazards a small smile at her, relief settling into him that she seems to have taken his apology to heart, or is at least extending their truce for the duration of breakfast, until she sticks the butter knife from her place setting through his heart.

Cynicism has become such a habit, the thought doesn't even feel pessimistic to him—only realistic in the self-protective way to which he is accustomed.

Before he can think of something else to say, the server, someone who looks vaguely familiar from previous visits, appears at the table with a couple menus and the coffee pot.

“This is new,” the woman observes, glancing between the two of them as she pours Josh's usual cup of coffee.

“Adopt-an-elf program,” Josh quips, annoyed at her observation that he's never brought anyone here before, and because it's none of her business. “They all need someplace to go after the holiday.”

“Oh, I see. Coffee?” she asks Lucy.

“They have tea too, if you prefer,” Josh interjects. “Do you have Twinings here?”

“Coffee's great, actually,” Lucy jumps in, sounding oddly clipped. “And a glass of water please. Thank you.”

“Sure thing. Do you guys need a minute to look at the menu?”

“Yes, please,” Josh says. He doesn't, but Lucy probably does, and he's eager to be rid of the hovering presence.

He opens the menu, not really looking at it because he always orders the same thing, but then notices that Lucy isn't doing the same. When he looks up, she is full-on glaring at him. “I can't believe you just did that,” she hisses in a low voice.

“What?” Genuinely baffled, Josh rewinds the last few moments until he hits a potential stumbling point. “Oh. The elf thing?” He sighs. “Okay, look. If it bothers you, I'll try to ease back on that stuff.”

Lucy rolls her eyes. “I don't care about that. News flash, I'm short, you’re descended from giant Yetis. Big whoopee.”

Josh blinks at her, not following. “Okay. So ...”

“She was clearly trying to figure out if we were together. You know ... _together_.” She gestures between the two of them, her eyes shifting back and forth as she avoids looking directly at him. “And obviously we're not, but you didn't have to make that clear by humiliating me.”

He's distracted by the pink pop of color appearing on Lucy's cheeks. The waitress had been … what? “Um, okay. I had no idea. I didn't … if that's what she was doing, I guess I didn't notice.”

“How could you not notice? She keeps looking over here, checking you out.”

“Are you sure?”

Josh is both confused by this information, and enlivened by the revelation that it matters to Lucy.

She shoots him another white-hot look before turning her attention to her menu.

“Well, that seems rude while I'm sitting here with you. Is she looking over here now?”

“No, not … yes. Now she is.”

Without so much as a glance at the offending server, Josh reaches across the table and sets his hand on top of Lucy's, in just the way he would want to take her hand if he had let himself get in the habit of wanting such things.

“What are you doing?” Lucy gasps, and Josh has to wrap his fingers securely around hers to keep them from slipping away. For good measure, he lifts them to his face and just barely touches her knuckles to his mouth, feeling daring, and watches her cheeks flame to almost the color of her lips. 

“Putting on a show. That'll show her, right?” Josh lets himself smile openly, fondly at her—an expression that’s one hundred percent real but for the moment has the safety of a bit of the old cloak. Lucy's mouth drops open, mesmerized.

Josh leans forward, lowering his voice. “Lucy, I'm glad you weren't bothered by what I said before. Because if we were together—” A thousand things, increasingly tantalizing for their proximity to possible at the moment, flit through this mind, but he sets them aside for later. “—believe me, I would have a hard time not teasing you about your size. I mean, look at you. Do you need a booster seat?”

She sits back, pulling her fingers from his, and shakes her head, looking—the word discombobulated comes to mind. “Oh, you're hilarious. Good one. I'm short, you say? I had no idea.”

The corner of his mouth quirks up at her, and she answers with a quirk of her own, quickly reigned in under control, but he can tell it's still lurking there underneath: one of Lucy's smiles … for him.

The server chooses that moment to sidle up again. “Are you ready to order?”

Realizing Lucy hasn't had a chance to actually look at the menu but not wanting to keep dealing with these interruptions, Josh decides to take a risk. “Mind if I give it a go?” he asks Lucy.

“Oh. Um. You can _try_ , I guess.”

He tilts his head, watching her, noticing her cheeks are still charmingly, unnaturally pink, and gives it a try.

“She’ll have a Belgian waffle … with strawberries … and whipped cream. And a side of bacon.”

He pauses, waiting for Lucy's confirmation, and she shrugs, then gives a nod.

“And the usual for me. Thanks.” He gathers up the menus and passes them back, virtually unused, to the server, whose expression he notices looks momentarily wistful.

“You guys are cute. Okay, I'll get that order in.”

“I don't _always_ eat strawberries,” Lucy says as soon as they’re alone again, the slight elevation of her shoulders suggesting some self-consciousness or defensiveness on the subject.

“But you're homesick right now,” Josh says softly, an observation that feels strangely intimate, an admission of how much he notices about her.

She stares at him, her demeanor softening, then sets about putting cream and sugar into her neglected coffee.

“Are you? Homesick?” she asks.

“A little,” he acknowledges. And it's true. Even though he's glad he's not at his parents' house for Christmas this year, there are things he misses. Quiet conversations with his mother. A less complicated relationship with his brother. “I can't say I regret where I am now, though.”

The look she's giving him, with her clear blue eyes, has turned so hopeful that his heart turns over.

“Are we friends now?” Lucy asks.

 _Friends_. The word sticks in his gut. “Is that what you want us to be?” he asks carefully.

Lucy tilts her head to the side and looks thoughtful. “Wouldn't that make working in such close quarters more pleasant? I didn't think it was possible for us to get along, but I can't actually stand to think of going back to how things were on Monday. Can you?”

Josh exhales, relieved at the confirmation that he had read her earlier moment of hurtful bravado correctly. “I don't think it's possible to go back to the way things were, no.”

She seems satisfied with that for the moment, thankfully, and then their food arrives.

“Mmm,” Lucy murmurs, taking her first bite. “This is exactly what I would have wanted, I think. It's uncanny.” She narrows her eyes toward him, but the suspicion in them seems more playful than anything.

“I think I know you pretty well at this point,” Josh says, pleased.

“There!” Lucy's finger springs across the table to point at his face. “You just did it again.”

“What?”

“You _smiled_. I can't believe Joshua Templeman smiles at me now. We've gone down a rabbit hole. We're in the Upside Down.”

He shrugs, looking down at his egg white and spinach omelet, pushing it around with his fork.

“And now I've scared it away,” Lucy says. “Hey, not to be like one of those creepy guys on the street who says things to random women, but you should smile more. Seriously, it changes your whole face. You look … friendly. Approachable. I feel like our whole thing could have gone differently if you had just—”

When she pauses, he dares to look up at her, smiling weakly. “If I had just … ?”

She hesitates another moment. “When we first met, and I introduced myself, I really wanted you to smile at me. Or say hello. 'It's nice to meet you.'” She makes cute little air quotes around the phrase. “It would have been so much easier.”

Reluctantly, Josh pulls himself away from this pleasant moment to think back to that day, how bleak and hollow he had felt, how bright and beautiful she had looked, how impossible it had seemed. How to explain that to her?

“Maybe you're right,” he acknowledges reluctantly. “I could have made more of an effort. I'm not good at this sort of thing.”

She's looking at him so intently right now, he can hardly stand it.

“What sort of thing?”

“People? Relationships?” He shakes his head ruefully, then forces himself to look up at her. “I promise I'll try, though.”

Her eyes meet his, a cute crinkle between them as she tries to figure out what he means, and he briefly considers blurting it all out, all the thoughts and feelings, once deeply buried but now lodged inconveniently in his throat. But he doesn’t like how public this is, how the server could suddenly show up with the coffee pot, how they’d be stuck here finishing a meal together no matter what happens.

“Monday is going to be interesting,” she finally says.

*****

They finish their breakfasts while sticking to less tricky subjects, and when the check arrives, Josh swipes it, over her protests.

“But you fed me last night. I said I owe you a meal, so I should—”

He shakes his head, waving her off as he signs the receipt. “I’m not ready to collect just yet.”

“If this is some power move to keep me in your debt, Josh, I swear,” she grumbles while zipping her coat up.

He smiles at the sound of his shortened name, which he’s not sure if he’s ever heard from her lips before. He likes the sound of it, of being just Josh, someone familiar and comfortable to her.

“Maybe I just like to feed you.” He holds open the door for her and then without ceremony lifts her over the puddle again. As he sets her down, he feels the buzz of his phone in his pocket and drops his hands away to reach for it.

Josh frowns, seeing his brother’s name on the screen, along with a missed call from his mother from the previous night, but no voicemails from either of them. If something was truly wrong, he’d have a message. But he’s almost certain he knows what’s going on.

A text message from Patrick a moment later confirms his suspicions: “ _Call me back. I have some news that I’d prefer you hear from me._ ”

And yeah, that about seals the deal.

“Are you okay?” Lucy asks, frowning at him in concern.

Taking stock, he realizes, strangely, that he is. Maybe he should feel something about Patrick (probably) getting engaged to his ex-girlfriend, but he doesn’t feel much of anything about it, having never felt much of anything for her. And having Lucy beside him, it seems unimportant, aside from the obvious importance of Patrick marrying anyone.

“Yeah, um. It’s my brother again. I’ll call him back in a bit from home.”

He’ll tell her later on, he reasons. It’s hardly the time to regale her with his past relationship failures. They would have plenty of time to get into all that, he hoped. And if not, it wouldn’t matter.

“It’s pretty out here,” Lucy says, not pressing him. “I wonder if the city will flood the rinks soon for ice skating. It seems cold enough.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I suppose ice skating is too frivolous for you or something.”

He winces to hear what she still thinks of him, although there’s not much bite to her words, so maybe she’s just ribbing him out of habit.

“I never learned. The idea of slipping and sliding around on the ice … Honestly, one of the disadvantages of being me”—he gestures to his entire large self, top to bottom—“is that when you fall, you fall hard. And you risk getting pretty hurt when you do.”

He looks away from her, hearing the double meaning in his own words as they come out.

When he dares a glance, she's studying him sideways. “I never thought of that. I thought being tall was all reaching things off the top shelf at the grocery store, glamorous stuff like that.” She pokes him in the side, and it feels almost affectionate.

“Not all so glamorous, no,” he agrees, a smile creeping up on him again.

He lets the smile spread across his face while he looks at her, and he’s soon rewarded with one her own, one of Lucy’s beautiful, elusive smiles, just for him. She looks unguarded, open, all sparkling eyes and pink cheeks, and radiant, treacherous hope blooms deep in his chest, just above the butterflies that are trying to alter world history in his stomach. 

Josh clears his throat. They are almost back to his apartment, and he has no reason to keep her here any longer. It's now or never. Literally, he will never have a better chance, and if he doesn't take it, it's as good as over.

“Lucy, um …” he begins, deciding it’s best just to launch into it. “I was hoping we could talk about last night. When we were exchanging gifts—”

She yelps like something bit her. “Can we not—”

“No, we need to … I think this is important.” He looks away from her, across the street. It's easier to talk like this when he's not looking directly at her. “I need to be clear on something. Last night, when you told me the story about your dad, and what it meant to you … ”

“I can't believe I told you about the Smurfs,” she squeaks miserably. “It’s so embarrassing.”

“I like knowing that about you,” he admits, glancing sideways at her, then away again, into the distance. “I wanted you to know you were right. I was thinking about you. When I bought the ornament, I was thinking about you.” He sucks in a deep breath. “I'm always thinking about you.”

“You _what_?” She slips a little in the snow, like his confession literally knocked her off balance, and he catches her by the elbow, then holds on.

“I—” He forces himself to look at her, but they're so close now and she's so short, that he's mostly looking at the top of her head. Frustrated, he glances around. They're next to a small neighborhood park with a fountain, the ledge around the fountain about a foot off the ground. Before he can second guess himself, he puts his hands around her waist and hoists her up.

“What are you doing?” she gasps, as he sets her carefully on the edge. Josh keeps his hands firmly on her waist so she doesn't slip, his fingers pressing into the fabric of her coat. Up here, he can look directly into her face, from close range, which is something he's avoided doing for their entire acquaintance, but it's time to get over that.

“See, that’s better.” He braves a small smile at her. “I’m going to have neck problems trying to talk to you, Shortcake.”

Lucy just blinks at him and his lame attempt at humor. Her breaths are coming in short, quick puffs that he can see in the air between them. From this range, he can see every freckle across her nose, and her eyes—

God, her eyes. He remembers looking at paint colors last summer, weighing the variations of pale turquoise blue against each other until he thought he had found just the right one, and then taking it to the counter. On impulse, he asked the clerk who mixed two gallons for him, who probably thought he was crazy for his apparent obsession with shades of blue, to write down the formula. When he tucked that information into his pocket, he felt calmer—like something unwieldy and powerful had been brought under control. It was a color in the known universe, comprised of pigment and light like any other, signified by a set of numbers that could be scribbled on the back of a paint chip.

He felt better for exactly 13.5 hours, until he walked into work the next day and saw her again, and almost laughed at his own stupidity. Her eyes weren’t paint chip blue, but radiant, sharp, observant blue, diamonds and forever blue. Not just the color of the sky, but the revelation of the first patch of blue sky breaking through on a cloudy day—a specific shade of possibility, where he had never seen a sliver of such a thing before.

“What are you doing?” Lucy’s voice snaps him back to the moment.

Lucy, who showed up at his apartment. Lucy, who kissed him last night. She started this, he reminds himself. This was her idea.

“I'm getting even,” he says. “Isn't that what we do?”

Her lips are still faintly stained after a night's sleep and breakfast, slightly parted in surprise, and Josh leans toward her slowly. Avoiding the temptation of her mouth, he presses his lips against her skin in the same place she had kissed him—just to the right and above her mouth—but he intends for this to be an entirely different kiss from the ephemeral episode of last night. He's nervous, his heart pounding in his chest, excess hormones surging through his veins, ready for fight or flight or worse, but he steadies himself and lingers, tenderly, reverently, with his mouth near hers.

Let there be no mistake he means this. 

Lucy shivers, or maybe it's him that shivers, and instinctively he puts his arms more fully around her, warming her, embracing her, being near her. This is where she should be.

“But you hate me,” she whispers, her voice so quiet that he might have missed it if he weren't holding her so close. The statement puffs into the air between their mouths without any substance or force behind it, like an old habit that is weary from overuse and ready to be set aside.

“I don't hate you, Lucy. I have never hated you.” He lets his cheek rest against her cheek and turns his nose into her hair. It's soft and fragrant—something crisp and fruity, not flowery. He inhales deeply, because smells imprint memories, and he wants to remember this forever, no matter what happens. “I hate that I like you so much. I hate that I can't have you.”

Lucy has moved her hands to his sides, and she squeezes, flexing her fingers, tentatively, experimentally. She hasn't drawn away from him. In fact, she seems to be pressing closer.

“Why can't you have me?”

He groans into her neck. “I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten what I want in my life, and I want you more than anything I’ve ever wanted before. Which makes you impossible. Which makes me—”

He doesn't finish his self-flagellating confession because Lucy has seized his coat in her fists and has pressed her mouth into his with full force. He's completely still with shock for a moment before he reanimates, pulling her closer, kissing her back.

Lucy is kissing him, urgent and greedy, and he is kissing her back, stunned, euphoric. She presses against him, her arms looping around his neck to pull him closer, her fingers digging into his hair.

When they pause to gasp for breath, her hands are cupping his face, gentle like a caress, until suddenly her expression changes and her hands drop away and then she—

Punches him in the gut? “OW.”

“ _You’re_ the impossible one.” She hops down from the ledge as he clutches his stomach more in disbelief than anything (her fist is tiny).

“I’m what?”

“Impossible!”

“I’m … ? You were just kissing me. And then you punched me.”

He stares after her, so flustered that apparently the best he can do is to just recap recent events.

“You never graduated from pulling pigtails on the playground, Josh? Picking on a girl because you like her? Seriously, Josh. You couldn’t have just asked me out?”

She has raced ahead of him while he was struck dumb by her tirade, but it only takes him a couple strides to catch up to her.

“Asked you out? Did you want me to?”

“No. Yes. No! I don’t know,” she sputters. “How would I even know, when you’ve always been .. and we’ve always been … I probably would have thought you were joking.”

He notices that she’s clutching her hand, and he reaches for it, wrapping it in his, and rubs her knuckles gently.

“Hitting you is like hitting a brick wall,” she grumbles. “Your stomach should have a warning label. How are you like that?”

“Too much time to kill. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I mean, it only stings a little. Are you okay? You’re the one I punched.” She slips her hand from his and makes a few adorable punching motions in the air.

“Yes, I’m okay. It just took me by surprise. You were kissing me.” It's like he's still trying to convince himself that it really happened.

“You were kissing _me_. And then I just … I don’t know, it all happened so suddenly, and I’m so confused. I think I really needed to get that out of my system.”

“Okay. I think I understand. But it’s out of your system now? Or do I need to be on my guard?”

“Oh, you should be on your guard.”

But she’s biting her lip flirtatiously now, and he can’t help but reach for her again, and as he leans down to her, miraculously she stretches up to him, so he can kiss her again—just a sweet press of his lips on hers, a prelude to what hopefully will be so much more. He wants to do this forever.

“Buy me dinner tonight?” he murmurs. “I've been slow, but I’m asking now.”

She smiles up at him. “Okay. I guess I owe you.”

“Here’s an idea. We could stop keeping score at some point.”

“How would that be any fun? We’re always … ” Then she gasps, pushing him away and stepping back. “We can’t do this!”

“What?”

“We work together, Josh.”

“We do work together,” he echoes, frowning.

“Josh, be serious. We can’t be working together and … doing whatever this is we’re doing.”

“Dating,” he supplies. “We're planning our third meal together. I think most people call it dating.”

“Oh.” She does a double take and shakes her head. “But … it’s against the rules. HR.”

“Are you seriously HRing me right now?” He stares at her, and can see that she’s really stuck on this. “Look … it’s just a job.”

She huffs. “Not _just_ a job. I dreamed of working in publishing. I worked hard for this.”

“Lucy. Okay, look. It’s okay. I meant, it’s just a job to me. You might have dreamed of working in publishing, but I just took the first offer I got, and I stayed because, well.” He swallows. “Anyway, we’ll figure it out. You won’t lose your job over this.”

She won’t, because he will. He’s already made up his mind that regardless of how things turned out this weekend, he wasn’t going to be able to work with her anymore. But he’s trying not to say that explicitly right now, when she’s already freaking out.

Tentatively, he reaches a hand toward her arm.

“This is crazy,” Lucy whispers. “When we’ve only just …”

“I didn’t only _just_.”

“Oh.” She seems to let that sink in. She seems to be letting it all sink in, everything they’re saying and everything they’re not saying, and Josh holds his breath, waiting. “It would be so weird not working together.”

He lets it out. “You would miss me?” He smiles down at her. “I thought I drove you up the wall.”

“You _do_ drive me up the wall.” Even as she says it, though, she’s leaning into him, grabbing at his shoulders, pulling him down to her.

“Do I? In a good way, I hope.” With his hands on her waist, he lifts her up a little, and then she’s kissing him again. Thoroughly. Sweetly. Enthusiastically. If Lucy herself were a word in the dictionary, he would add -ly to make her an adverb, because that's the best way he can think to describe the way she kisses. Like herself.

She sighs, a sound that’s somehow both contented and frustrated sounding. “You’re really good at that. I feel like it’s clouding my judgment right now.”

“I think your judgment's fine. Come on, it’s cold. I have Boggle and strawberries and shortbread in my apartment.” He lets her slide down his body until her feet hit the pavement again, and closes his eyes to absorb the exquisite feel of it.

“Can I go back to my apartment to get some clean clothes?”

“Are you sure you need clothes?”

“Uh …” She stares at him slack-jawed, her eyes gone round. He’s shocked her.

Josh grins. “I’m kidding. You haven’t even bought me dinner yet. Yeah, we can make a stop at your apartment.”

She eyes him, a piercing, hungry look that makes his cheeks feel warm. “What?”

“I want to grab your smiles and stuff them in my pockets so that I can take them out and study them later.”

A laugh sputters out of his mouth as they make their way into his building. The elevator’s already on the ground floor, and the door opens immediately when he presses the button.

“Josh?”

“Lucy?”

“Is this real?”

He blinks at the seriousness and vulnerability in her voice and feels the wistful butterflies of sheer want clamor in his chest as he considers her question.

He wants to unbutton her coat, let it slip from her shoulders, and press her against the closed door as soon as they’re inside his apartment. He wants to hold her hand at a movie theater. He wants to cook dinner while she teases him from the kitchen table. He wants to take her to bed.

The possibility that he will do any of that certainly doesn’t feel real yet. It all feels like an impossible dream he hasn’t woken up from yet.

“I hope so.” He reaches his hand toward her face, tracing the silhouette with his fingers. “I sincerely hope so.”


	4. Coda

Waiting for the elevator doors to slide open on the top floor of Bexley & Gamin, Josh’s heart beats faster, like it always does when he’s about to see her. Stepping out, he can see through several layers of glass to Lucy at her desk, and beyond to the two darkened offices. It looks like Helene and Richard have already gone home for the day, just as he had hoped.

She’s deep in concentration as she types something at her usual warp speed, and he watches her from the doorway for a moment. Lips so red, eyes so blue, hair so dark. Lucy, so beautiful. It’s been a month, and he still can’t get over it.

Her fingers stop flying over the keyboard, and he takes the opportunity to make her aware of his presence.

“Hey, Shortcake,” he says, and she startles.

“Don’t call me that!” she squeals, but she lights up when she sees him. “I’m almost ready, just one second.”

She saves what she’s working on, locks her computer, and gathers her things into her bag as Josh watches. Her dress today is flame red, like her lipstick, fitted on the top and flaring from her waist, with a zipper up the back that Josh helped her with this morning. He takes her coat down from the hook and holds it up for her.

“It’s an endearment, I swear.”

“I should start calling you Beefcake.”

Josh recoils a bit. “That’s kind of objectifying. And corny.”

“It would serve you right, though.”

“I guess I’ll take what endearments I can get.” He’s serious, he really would. “You’re ready to go?”

“Yeah. You didn’t have to pick me up. It’s a bit out of the way, isn’t it?”

Josh has started working in the financial department at a competing publishing firm. It’s a good job, actually a considerable step up from his old one, but it did have one major drawback.

“I wanted to see you.”

She grins at his admission and slides her hand into his in front of the elevator. “I’m glad. I have good news.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, it’s not news yet.” She swings his hand a bit as they step into the elevator. “It’s not anything yet. Helene called me into her office to talk about ‘my future.’”

Josh raises his eyebrows. “Interesting. And what might your future hold?” He could think of a number of things he’d like to put on that list.

“I don’t really know, but she alluded to vague opportunities for advancement down the line. Some kind of new position she and Bexley are still figuring out, maybe next summer. I think she’s worried I’ll quit like you did.”

“She should be worried. You’re way overqualified for that job.”

“I guess so.”

“That’s great, Lucy. I’m glad she realizes it.”

She beams at him, her eyes bright and … happy. She looks happy, and it makes him feel happy. He’s still getting used to it. And he wants—

“Hey,” he says, an idea taking hold. His finger circles the emergency stop button and impulsively, he presses it. The elevator comes to a bumpy halt between floors.

Lucy looks at him with wide eyes. “What are you doing?”

“Something I have always wanted to do.” He sets his hands on her waist and hoists her up onto the railing.

“Josh! Oh my god. Is this _allowed_?”

“Allowed?” Josh chuckles. “No crying HR anymore, Lucinda. I don’t work here.”

“Yeah but—” He silences her the best way he knows how, and despite her protestations, she kisses him back immediately, clutching him close, her legs circling his waist. He drops one of his hands to grip her thigh where her dress is riding up, and presses into her, groaning. Not here, but as soon as he gets her home—

A crackling noise breaks into their increasingly steamy bubble, and an indistinct voice says, “Everything okay in there?”

Josh closes his eyes and takes a steadying breath, his forehead falling against Lucy’s as they stay locked in their illicit embrace. “Sorry, uh, bumped the button.”

“We’re good!” Lucy chirps, making Josh wince at how suspicious they sound.

The tinny voice makes a vaguely disapproving sound, and the elevator starts up, only to stop again a second and a half later. Josh lets Lucy slide down his body, giving her ass a quick squeeze, and then leans into her ear as the door slides open.

“This isn’t over yet.”

“I should hope not,” she retorts, with a saucy wink.

As he watches her smooth her disheveled clothing, wondering how he got to be so lucky, his pocket buzzes, and he pulls out his phone, annoyed at the intrusion. Reading the message from Patrick, Josh groans, in an entirely different sort of frustration from moments before.

“What is it?” Lucy presses him as they get into his car.

“Um.” Josh looks at her, frozen in his old insecurities. 

Things are good. It’s early, but they’re happy, he thinks. She _likes_ him, for some reason.

He doesn’t want to mess this up.

“Are you breaking up with me?” she blurts.

“What? No. Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know. You had a look. And I just worry.”

“You don’t need to worry, not about that.” Josh almost laughs at the absurdity, that  _ she  _ would be insecure about _him_. Jesus. He needs to just get over himself and tell her.

“Actually … I do have something to tell you.” He presses his fingertips against his eye sockets, then drums them against the steering wheel. “I’ve put it off longer than I should because it’s kind of embarrassing.”

He feels Lucy’s hand on his arm, her touch steady and soothing. “I would love to hear something embarrassing about you, Josh. It’s inhuman to be so perfect. Please tell me all your sordid little secrets.”

When he looks at her, her eyes are so filled with warmth and affection he immediately feels the dread in his gut subside. He’s hardwired for cynicism, but if he’s being honest … the worst-case scenario he can envision here, once he tells Lucy the full backstory of how he knows his brother’s fiance, isn’t that she might want to leave him, or even that she would necessarily think less of him. He’s pretty sure Lucy of all people is well-versed in his less attractive qualities by now, and strangely, he hasn’t put her off yet.

No, the worst-case scenario he can think of is that once Lucy knows about the engagement party Patrick has been hounding him about, she’ll want to go. She will insist on going. 

And he really doesn’t want to go. 

Even so, when he pictures going to Patrick and Mindy’s engagement party with Lucy, this sparkling, feisty ally, by his side, he thinks he could probably make it through. And that’s a lot.

“Okay, I will tell you. But first …” He reaches across the console and wraps his hand around the back of her head, through her wild curls, to pull her to him one more time—a gentle press of the lips that’s meant to communicate all the other big things he hasn’t said out loud yet.

As he settles into his seat and puts the key in the ignition finally, Lucy exclaims, “Oh! Josh, you’re a mess.”

“Yeah, I guess I am. It’s silly, I just feel—"

But before he can slide too far into his hang-ups, Lucy is reaching across the console. “You have my lipstick all over your face.”

“Oh.” That’s what she had meant. He holds still as she rubs her thumb across his upper lip, his eyes drawn to her own—the color of possibility, close enough to grasp. 

“Much better," Lucy says. "Now I think you should take me home as quickly as possible so you can make good on all your promises.”

“All my promises?”

“I’m thinking, one article of clothing removed for each embarrassing confession.”

“I hardly think I have _that_ many.”

“Dig deep, Josh. I’ll make it worth your while.” 

He turns the key in the ignition. “You … always with the quid pro quo, huh?”

She flashes a smile so bright, it almost blinds him. “Always.”

_ Always_. Josh doesn’t mind the sound of that. He doesn’t mind the sound of that at all.


End file.
